


Cast No Shadow

by PersonalSpin



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Anxiety Attacks, Bad Decisions, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Drinking to Cope, Dubious Science, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hanzo Shimada has Anxiety, Hanzo Shimada has Prosthetic Legs, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalised Body Issues, Jesse McCree is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Graphic Loss of Limbs, POV Alternating, Post-Recall, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-03-27 19:06:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersonalSpin/pseuds/PersonalSpin
Summary: Jesse McCree knows better than to trust a man without a soul. AHis Dark MaterialsAU about things said and unsaid, and those you stay and those who leave.(Not that kind ofdemon, this kind ofdæmon.)





	1. The Thunderbolt

**Author's Note:**

> this is twice as long as my previous longest fic and i'm honestly not sure how i got here. enormous thanks go to Chillie and Sadako for their help beta-ing this monster, Dee for running the big bang, and the discord server for their cheerleading. u guys all rock <3 
> 
> My incredible artist is nangke and you can find the art they did for my fic [here!](http://nangke.tumblr.com/post/172214212749/here-are-my-drawings-for-personalspins-fic) it's also posted in the fic body so if you want to avoid spoilers you won't miss out on the art 
> 
> i'll be popping up in the notes to explain stuff, add to the world-building, etc. if u have any question u can always shoot me a comment here or on my [tumblr](https://personalspin.tumblr.com). i play a little fast and loose with the timeline (so not unlike blizzard) to better fit the au and my own headcanons. some names of places and things are changed as per the au but their real-life counterpart should still be discernible. and if you disagree with the dæmon forms/names u are free to do so! but please don't pick a fight in the comments about it.
> 
> chapters are named after symbols on the alethiometer and give some hints to the contents of the chapter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration, Fate, Chance.

It’s unseasonably cold in Paris, and Jesse’s dæmon is watching snow sweep down the street and melt in the puddles of lamplight. It ain’t sticking but it’s the kind of nasty weather that makes McCree glad he’s got a warm stove to stand at, with only the crooning of a scratchy telegraph to keep him company. The Parisian safe house isn’t fancy — hell, it’s barely habitable, with the shop it’s situated over looking like it’s been boarded up for years — but the vantage is amazing. They can see down the whole street and Karma likes to make use of the view as much as he can. It keeps Jesse from paranoid habits like keeping Peacekeeper to hand.

He trusts his dæmon’s eyes like his own, because they were his own. They are one entity and Karma’s caution is Jesse’s, their thoughts and feelings shared through the invisible but powerful bond that ties a person and their dæmon together.

Everything is snow-silent — McCree feels like the only person alive, like he could never see another living soul again. It makes the report of a gunshot seem unearthly loud and the both of them startle out of their skins. McCree goes for his gun and Karma’s got sharp eyes on the street outside. He spots them as Jesse strides over to him. “At least three on one. Running like hell too.”

They’re still a ways away, where the lamplight doesn’t reach, and it’s all McCree can do just to see the dark shapes of men coming down the street. There’s no crack of a gun but a silhouette, one of the pursuers he thinks, stumbles and falls. The single man takes off at a dead sprint towards the safe house, sticking to the shadows in the eaves of the buildings, while his attackers hide behind automotives for cover. The pursued man disappears from sight and doesn’t reappear after a long moment of waiting. McCree doesn’t realise he’s been holding his breath until he lets it out with a curse. He’s hiding out in the old shop; he’ll be lucky if he isn’t spotted immediately and now he’s backed himself into a corner. Jesse’s bolting for the stairs down to the front door before he can think better of it, his dæmon right behind him.

McCree presses up against the door to the street, thumbing the safety on Peacekeeper. “Aw, hell,” Karma murmurs as Jesse cracks the door. A gust of wind throws snow into his face, and Jesse has to squint just to see. It’s quiet again. Jesse holds his breath and listens, until the skin of his cheek starts to go numb and he’s sure he’s got snow in his beard, but— _there_. An exhale and something scraping, like a foot against an old shop floor.

Jesse whistles. “Y’wanna get out of there, partner, trust me,” he calls out from the doorway. “The back’s all boarded and you’ll be pinned.”

There’s no response. McCree grits his teeth. Ain’t his business, he reminds himself even as he wedges the door open with his boot and leans out further. “C’mon, they’re gonna be along— _hell_ ,” he says as he hears feet pounding down the pavement. He’ll have to close the door and leave the man to his fate — no sense getting involved when it ain’t his business. He’ll move on in the morning and won’t even look in; Jesse’s got enough blood on his hands without borrowing any.

He’s telling himself all this as he’s raising his gun, a hand on the doorframe. Jesse’s won out over worse odds, he thinks as the footsteps get closer, wouldn’t even take much to line up the three shots he’d need. The dark’s not ideal but there’s a lamp outside his door, he’d just have to wait until they were under it—

A body barrels into him and wrenches the door from his hand, startling a yelp from him and Karma. They close the door with surprising softness and stay pressed against it, hand on the handle. Jesse waits too, his legs tangled up with the stranger’s and gripping the wall for support. The footsteps thunder past and away down the street — they don’t even pause at the shop before disappearing out of earshot.

Jesse breathes out slowly. “Lucky escape ya got there,” he says quietly.

The man snorts as his hand falls from the handle. “You did not see the running I had to do before now.”

Jesse’s opening his mouth — to say something clever, no doubt — when the stranger turns enough to glance at him. Dark eyes, a bridge piercing, a hint of a smirk. The words die in Jesse’s throat and he makes an undignified wheezing noise instead.

The stranger looks sharply to the side, the prettiest damn eyes McCree’s ever seen narrowing suddenly in suspicion. It takes him longer than it should to realise he’s spotted Peacekeeper still in Jesse’s hand. Jesse holsters his gun and takes a step back from the stranger. “Well,” he says, taking in the rest of the man he’d just rescued. A jacket too light for the miserable weather, a big case for an instrument on his back and a bow in his hand — an actual _bow_ , like something of old. “I’m real glad you decided to come in rather than take yer chances out there.”

“I too am glad,” the strangers says, relaxing as he moves away from the door as well. “I did not have the arrows to deal with my pursuers. You have my gratitude for your timely intervention.”

“Aw, hell,” McCree mutters. There was something about the sincere way the stranger says it, like Jesse hadn’t just opened his door and whistled for him. “Couldn’t just leave you to get shot. Yer not hurt, are ya?”

“I am unharmed,” the stranger says. He glances at the door. “I will leave in a moment, once I am sure they are gone. I will not trouble you much longer.”

“Ain’t no trouble,” Jesse says, and he doesn’t mean the way it sounds like innuendo. Except that it ain’t trouble when it gets him a view like this; the stranger’s flushed from the cold and his escape, and there’s something sharp and a little dangerous living in his dark eyes and the line of his shoulders.

The stranger gives him a look like he knows all of this, and having that spark aimed at Jesse makes him shiver deliciously. He drags his eyes over him and Jesse feels it like a physical touch, and he must like what he sees because the stranger folds his arms and leans back, smirking like an invitation. Jesse is helpless against the urge to lean forward and brace his arm by the stranger’s head.

“It’s awful cold out,” Jesse says. The stranger hums noncommittally and quirks an eyebrow. “What kinda host would I be if I let ya go without a little something to warm ya up?”

“And how do you propose to warm me up, cowboy?”

Jesse grins toothily. “I got coffee.”

The stranger ducks his head to snort indelicately into his hand. His dangerous-looking smirk has gone goofy, and Jesse’s already got it bad for this handsome stranger. “If you have no objections to inviting me into your home,” he says, already slinging his bow over his shoulder.

“Can’t promise it’s any good but it’s hot and strong,” Jesse says with a shameless eyebrow waggle, which earns him another undignified giggle-snort. “Jesse McCree. Ya got a name, sugar?”

“I do,” the stranger says as he ducks Jesse’s arm and goes up the stairs to the safe house. Jesse only just remembers not to stare at his ass.

“I’d loved to hear it,” he calls after the stranger as he follows him up. Jesse gets nothing but another smirk tossed over his shoulder as the stranger walks into the safe house like he owns it. He casts an unconcerned eye over everything; the big window, the beat-up old loveseat in the corner Jesse hadn’t been brave enough to try on account of the stains, the kitchenette with his dinner still on the hob and the soft warbling of the telegraph beside it. “Ain’t much,” he says, unaccountably self-conscious. Maybe it’s the way the stranger moves like he’s taking control of the room just by being in it, all powerful self-possession and the quiet assurance that he is the most dangerous thing in the room. Jesse had met a couple of people like that in his life, and he ain’t ashamed to admit he’d slept with most of them.

“You are alone?” the stranger asks as he checks down the hallway that has the bathroom and single bedroom.

“Yeah, darlin’. S’just you and me,” Jesse calls to him.

“Jes,” Karma hisses, knocking his shoulder into Jesse’s knees, “he ain’t—”

“I know.”

It’d be hard not to notice that the man didn’t have a dæmon. It wasn’t as uncommon as it used to be; someone might see one or two people without dæmons in their lifetime. McCree had seen plenty in Blackwatch. He remembers his first, still fresh out of New Mejico. It’s eery and unnatural looking, the absence of a vital thing like the physical manifestation of a person’s soul. He’s seen worse since then.

Still, he’d always held a piece of his Mamá’s advice close to his heart; if you wanted to know a man, look to their dæmon. And without one, well. Jesse McCree had never been a particularly trusting man.

The stranger reappears from the hallway and crosses his arms, leaning on the doorway. “I believe I was promised coffee?”

“Coming right up,” Jesse says. Karma heads back to the window, though he lets Jesse know through a quiet huff and judgemental ear flick what he thinks of his choices. Jesse for his part winks at the stranger as he walks past him. “You take sugar, sugar?”

“Will it make it palatable?” the stranger asks as he follows Jesse to the kitchenette. He props his hip against the counter and does nothing to help. McCree watches him out of the corner of his eye and figures the stranger has positioned himself to get the best view of both the door to the stairs and the window.

“Darlin’, ain’t nothing that can save it,” McCree says as he takes down the tin of coffee from the cupboards and two cracked mugs. The coffee had probably been there since Blackwatch, and he wouldn’t vouch for the sugar either. “It jus’ depends on if ya prefer it bitter or sweet. No judgement, but if’n ya want it bitter yer a braver man than I.”

“I would not have taken you for a coward,” the stranger says haughtily as McCree moves the pot with his soup — now barely tepid, damn — and puts the kettle on the stovetop. “I thought gunslingers were supposed to be fearless even against insurmountable odds.”

“Aw, have a heart,” Jesse says, pouting. “I was raised to pick my battles, and I’ll be damned if I let a cup of coffee be what does me in.”

“I am starting to regret accepting your offer, Jesse McCree,” the stranger says, and hearing Jesse’s name on his lips shouldn’t be so satisfying. Jesse’s probably grinning like a damned fool but he can’t find it in himself to squash it. He turns to look at the stranger only to see him quickly turn away, though not quick enough to hide his own smile.

The telegraph starts to play something old and Jesse hums along to it, swaying a little. That prevailing silence from before settles back over the safe house, and Jesse is surprised and delighted to find the stranger doesn’t feel the need to fill it. He just keeps watch through hooded eyes; Jesse might have thought he was falling asleep if not for the tension in his shoulders and the way he tapped one finger along to the telegraph. It lets Jesse gets a good look in — he hadn’t realised until then that both his legs were prosthetic, and nice ones. His bow is also a nice bit of equipment and Jesse wouldn’t mind getting a closer look, but it’s probably bad form to ask another wanted man to hand over his weapon just so he could fondle it.

When the coffee’s ready, Jesse hands him his mug before dumping a couple of generous spoonfuls of sugar into his own drink. The stranger watches with an unreadable expression for a moment before spooning in a more moderate amount.

“Cheers,” Jesse says, lifting his mug.

“ _Kanpai._ ”

They each take a sip. Jesse grimaces as he remembers exactly how unpalatable Blachwatch coffee is. His memory really hadn’t done it justice and he’s grateful it’s hot enough to scorch his tongue so he doesn’t have to taste very much of it.

The stranger curses as he takes another sip. “This is vile.”

“I’d never lie when it came to coffee, sweetness.” Jesse sighs. “Could kill for a chai latte about now.”

“I would prefer sake.”

“Only if ya had enough to share — ain’t right for a man to drink alone.”

The stranger tries to hide his smile behind his mug but Jesse can see the way it makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. His crow’s feet ain’t deep and smooth out well enough as he takes another sip. Someone had loved him enough to give him new legs and a fancy bow, but not enough to make him smile. There’s something sad in that and Jesse has to remind himself again not to borrow trouble — but it doesn’t stop him being curious as a cat.

Jesse’s got no doubt the stranger’s looking at him just as closely, but his secrets ain’t the kind you find by looking. “Hey,” Jesse says, and loses the thought as soon as the stranger turns to him with wine-dark eyes. He’s never met a man where something as simple as eye contact had so much weight behind it. A frisson races up his spine.

It isn’t because of the mysterious, handsome stranger; Karma’s pressed to the window, his hackles up around his ears.

“Trouble?” the stranger asks.

Karma glances back at them. “Eyed three more headed our way.”

“Damn.” Jesse turns to the stranger, who’s set his coffee down and is already unslinging his bow. “Didn’t happen to find any more arrows, did ya?”

“I will be able to stall them,” he says, his face hard and eyes flinty. “Go. The window in the bedroom leads out to the street. They will not follow you.”

“Now, darlin’,” McCree says, moving to the old loveseat. Peacekeeper has six rounds in the chamber and Jesse checks his spare ammo too. The door at street level thumps once, twice, and he can hear people yelling indistinctly. He flicks the chamber back into place and gives the stranger a toothy grin. “Weren’t ya the one saying cowboys ought’a be courageous?”

The stranger’s fingers have gone white around his bow and his brows are drawn low over his stormy face. “I cannot ask you to do that for me.”

“Don’t recall ya asking me anythin’.” Jesse keeps his gaze steady and implacable as the desert sun, and the stranger looks back with all the tightly leashed fury of a storm at sea. Below them the door rattles in its frame as someone puts their shoulder to it — it’s deceptively fragile, and McCree knows they’ll get bruises before the door caves. It’ll give eventually, not even Blackwatch safe houses are impenetrable, and when it does Jesse plans on meeting them with weapons drawn.

“You would risk yourself for a stranger?” Jesse’s guest asks, lifting his chin to give a haughty look. “Then you are a fool.”

“Won’t hear any arguments,” Karma says, trotting over to stand with Jesse.

Jesse shrugs, spinning Peacekeeper in his hand. “Consider it a failin’ of mine. Can’t help but borrow trouble.” The safe house reverberates with a crack as the door finally begins to surrender. Jesse crouches behind the loveseat, pulling out a cigarillo, while the stranger takes cover behind the counter. “Like to know who I’m shootin’ at though, if ya don’t mind me askin’,” he asks as he lights the end and stows his lighter again.

“They are part of a group called Talon. Their leaders and I are... experiencing a difference of opinion. It is their opinion that I would do better serving them. I disagree. This is their attempt at persuasion.” Jesse scoffs around the cigarillo. “I am similarly unconvinced.”

“Always did like a man with strong convictions,” McCree says. He leans out of his cover enough to grin at the stranger, who looks torn between scowling disapprovingly and smirking back.

Several things happen in quick succession. The front door slams into the wall and heavy boots pound up the stairs. Two men burst into the safe house with their guns drawn and McCree fires at them. The first man is hit between the eyes, killing him instantly. The other man recoils — he gets an arrow embedded in his throat and he goes down with a wet gurgle, his dæmon screaming before dying in a burst of golden light.

The third man has his gun lowered already and his eyes are inevitably drawn to the light of McCree’s cigarillo. He fires. However, his mistake is having a small dæmon and leaving them within reach of Karma. Jesse’s dæmon leaps forward, and McCree sees nothing more than brown fur between Karma’s jaws before he can taste Dust on his tongue and the third man drops dead. It’s over within a minute.

“That weren’t so hard,” McCree says, sitting back on his heels and taking a long drag on his cigarillo. He looks up to see the stranger striding over to him, face like a thundercloud again.

He grabs Jesse’s arm and wrenches it forward. McCree grunts when he spots the new dent in his prosthesis — the bullet hadn’t missed so much as ricocheted off the plating before hitting the wall behind him. McCree’s probably gonna feel pretty chagrined about it once the adrenaline wears off.

“Fool,” the stranger spits, dropping his arm again — tossing it down, more like.

“I’ve been hit worse’n this,” Jesse says, wiggling his prosthetic fingers. The stranger was grittin' his teeth like he could bite the sites off a six-gun, but he storms away before McCree can do anything regrettable like try to flirt his way out of trouble. “Well then. Karma?”

“Already ahead’a ya,” Jesse’s dæmon says. Together they gather up what little they had in the safe house — a spare shirt and an extra pair of socks, more ammo. Gun, cigarillos, lighter. Uppin’ stakes doesn’t take very long when you’ve spent as long as he has on the run. The last thing McCree does is wrap his _serape_ around his shoulders before he walks into the bedroom. The stranger is still there — granted, with one foot on the windowsill while giving Jesse a sour look. His bow’s gone, probably stashed in his instrument case now that Jesse thinks about it.

Jesse takes a drag of his cigarillo to cover up his surprise. “C’mon, snake, let’s rattle on outta here.”

“I was not the one who delayed us,” the stranger snaps. He swings his other leg out of the window and drops out of sight.

Jesse sticks his head out the window to see him already waiting on the street below and glaring up at him once more. “Here, catch!” Jesse yells before slinging his bag out the window. The stranger catches it, probably only out of reflex than anything else — he makes eye-contact with Jesse and promptly drops it. “Now that’s just hurtful.”

“Hurry up or I will leave you,” the stranger yells back, tucking his hands into his pockets. He doesn’t stop watching Jesse as he hoists his dæmon on to his back and none too quickly makes his descent from the window.

“Enjoying the view, archer?”

The stranger makes a thoughtful noise. “I have seen better.”

“Ain’t nobody — uhf — more graceful than Jesse McCree!”

“You and I appear to have very different ideas of grace, cowboy.”

McCree lands hard and stumbles, though he manages to recover before he joins his bag in the dirty snow. Karma jumps down and Jesse bends to scoop up his bag, tipping his hat to the stranger when he stands. “I hope we can settle our differences amicably. Ya seem a decent fellow, I’d hate to kill you.”

The stranger smirks and starts to walk away. “You seem a decent fellow, I’d hate to die.”

McCree falls a little more in love as he strides to keep up.

***

They hitch a ride on a sleeper train out of France — they even manage to find themselves an empty carriage. It ain’t a hypertrain but it’ll get them gone quick enough. Karma, who’s become downright superstitious about trains, huffs and grumbles before settling beneath Jesse’s bunk with his eyes on the door. Jesse tucks his bag under his head and makes himself as comfortable as he can on the narrow bunk. There’s not a lot of room for his long legs without getting a crick in his neck, but he pulls his hat down over his eyes and he figures he could get some sleep like this. Shame about his soup though.

His new travelling companion rustles about on the bunk on the other side of the carriage, and Jesse takes a peek to see him holding out a snack bar towards him. “It’s alright, darlin’,” he says lowly. “Probably need it more’n me after how you ran all over Paris.” It’s not the first time he’s slept hungry and his empty stomach twists at the thought of taking another man’s food.

The stranger scowls at him and doesn’t lower the snack bar. “I have others and I interrupted your meal.”

“It’s fine, I ain’t—”

“I do not believe you. Take the food, McCree.”

“No.”

The stranger makes an impatient noise that is part scoff, part frustrated growl. He flicks open the latches on his instrument case and grabs another snack bar that he whips at Jesse’s face with deadly accuracy. He opens the one he’d offered with his teeth; if there’s a way to eat a snack bar angrily, he’s discovered it, eyes narrowed at McCree the whole time.

“Thank you,” Jesse says eventually. He unwraps his snack — with his _hands_ , his Mamá didn’t raise a savage — and takes a bite. He immediately grimaces. “Got anything without nuts? Maybe some chocolatl?”

The stranger eats his own snack without a care for Jesse. “No.”

“Why don’t I believe that?”

He smirks. “You may believe whatever you wish.”

Jesse finishes his bar and settles back to catch some sleep. He thinks the stranger might sleep too; the carriage is dark and quiet, and it’s an uneventful ride to the Catalonian border. They’re only a couple of miles outside of Toulouse when the stranger moves quietly to the carriage door, taking his instrument case with him. Karma lifts his head from between his paws but otherwise doesn’t move to stop him. To his credit, the stranger pauses in the open doorway and looks back at him.

“It’ll hurt him,” Karma says.

“He has survived worse.”

Karma nods and lowers his head again. “Yer ever in trouble, call and we’ll come runnin’.”

The stranger is still for a moment before he nods and leaves the carriage.

“He ain’t gonna call,” Jesse says lowly without shifting from his sprawl across the bunk.

“I know.” Karma jumps up on to the bunk with Jesse, who buries his flesh hand in the thick fur of his neck. “But some things have to be heard as much as they have to be said.”

“Sound like the old man when ya talk like that.” They lie in silence, the sound of the train clattering over the tracks the only company for Jesse’s thoughts. The train starts to slow as it moves through the city, the carriage lighting up and darkening by turns as they pass streetlights. “Guess not everything Reyes said was bullshit.”

“Even a stopped clock, Jes. He woulda had somethin’ to say about lettin’ in a stranger like that.”

“And there’s why I try my best to listen to neither of ya.” Jesse stands up slowly, tipping Karma back on to the floor and stretching out the kinks in his back. “If we’re lucky, we can get a ride outta here and down the coast without any more excitement. Don’t think yer heart could take it.”

“It ain’t my heart I’m worried about,” Karma says, snapping at Jesse’s fingers. He pulls on his dæmon’s ear as they leave the carriage and step out on to the train platform.

***

Hanzo breathes in through his nose, holds the breath deep in his lungs until his chest begins to ache, and lets it out slowly through pursed lips. From the shadows between train carriages, he watches the cowboy and his wolfdog dæmon speaking to each other, both looking travel-worn. Jesse still smiles as he pets through his dæmon’s russet and grey fur, lets the rangy creature chew on his fingers in return.

McCree is strange, Hanzo decides. What life has McCree led that he would let in a hunted man so readily, kindly ask the wrong questions. He cannot remember the last time he has spoken to another person so _normally_.

Hanzo’s missing dæmon had seen friendly faces turn to disgust many times before, flirtation to sneers. He doesn’t usually trouble himself with such thoughts but the cowboy had refused to let him be, even when all he did was snore softly in the bunk on the other side of the carriage. Hanzo hadn’t known normalcy was a thing he could miss until he’d realised he was following McCree like an attention-starved animal, desperate for even a kind word from a stranger.

Then something had shifted. Hanzo had been drifting in the space between sleep and wakefulness — aware of the train carriage and the other man with him but resting, almost. A smell of hot metal had drifted in through the window, perhaps, or Hanzo had remembered the golden light of his pursuers’ dæmons dying. The sense memory of his sword in his hand, slick with blood, had rushed through his thoughts then. Hanzo had stumbled to his feet, his heart rabbiting in his chest. He had to go, had to leave, _he had to go_ —

How could he have forgotten. How could he let it slip his mind the reason why he did not speak to others, why he did not deserve this kindness. McCree’s dæmon had spoken to him as he left — parting charity. Hanzo’s stomach twists as he watches Jesse leave the train station, his dæmon trotting at his side. He had put a kind man in danger tonight, he shouldn’t have— he did not deserve—

Hanzo takes another deep breath, stepping away from the platform and further into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: there is no spain in this world. the iberian peninsula is instead made up of portugal, castile, catalonia, and the basque republic. gibraltar goes by gebraltarik, so next chapter we're headed to watchpoint: gebraltarik.


	2. The Horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Europe, Journeys, Fidelity.

A Recall, huh?

***

Jesse doesn’t remember ever being at Watchpoint: Gebraltarik, but all these old bases were alike. Same layout, same logo plastered over everything — same people, even. Winston’s thrilled to see him and pulls him into a debrief before McCree’s so much as set his bag down. It ain’t a long meeting — Overwatch is small, it’s covert, and it’s very illegal. That all suits him just fine, and Winston lets him go only for Lena to tackle him the moment she sees him. “Jesse! You made it!”

“Nice to see ya too,” he grunts, righting his hat from where she’d nearly knocked it off. “Careful now, we’re neither of us as young as we used to be.”

Lena slugs him in the arm. “Right, you’re one foot in the grave, you are. Practically pushing up daisies already.”

“You don’t half smell like it,” her dæmon Rayleigh squeaks. The little monkey dæmon hops down from her shoulder and puts his paws on Karma’s flank, tugging at his ear. “Yeurgh! Which grave did you crawl out of?”

Karma snaps at him and they bound off together down the corridor. Lena grabs Jesse by the arm and takes it upon her herself to give him a tour of the base, pointing out everything of interest as they go. They’ve got the training rooms back up and running, and most of the dorms are fit for habitation — mostly, if the grimace Lena gives is any indication. He could probably get around himself just fine but he lets himself have this small indulgence, the unimportant chatter of a friend in a place that’s safe.

The people out for his bounty, and the police keen to pin him for every crime west of Suez, had been breathing hard down his neck for months now. It was gettin’ to be inevitable that he’d find the old Blackwatch safe houses with their doors kicked in, cupboards empty and muddy footprints all over the floor. McCree didn’t stay in those places but that left his options thin on the ground — motels shady enough to take cash that wouldn’t look too closely at the gun-shaped lump under his _serape_ never had locks worth shit.

He knows he looks tired — he _feels_ tired — and even if Overwatch is doomed to collapse under its own weight again, he can cool his heels with some old friends. There are worse places and ways to spend his time, except Lena keeps on shooting him concerned looks and she’d never been able to hold out against her own curiosity for long.

“Seriously, luv, are you OK?” she asks eventually. Lena lets go of Jesse to put her hands on her hips and give him a long, scrutinising look. “You look like what my mum would call ‘in rather desperate need of a strong brew’.” She brightens and Jesse breathes a sigh of relief. “Kitchen’s down there, d’ya fancy a cuppa?”

“That’d be real nice. Thanks, Lena.”

“No trouble at all, luv!” she says as she zips away, her dæmon a little ball of blue light behind her.

“Gonna have to let them know at some point,” Karma says, trotting back to Jesse.

“If ya wanna tell ‘em we got a bounty that’d bankrupt a small country, you go right ahead, Karm. While yer doin’ that, I’m gonna go drink some’a Lena’s tea.”

Lena is flitting around the kitchen, filling the kettle and setting it to boil while fetching the tea bags and mugs from the cupboard. It already looks lived in — she must have answered Winston the moment the Recall went out. Lena’s keeping up a running conversation with her dæmon, though Jesse doesn’t catch most of his responses as he disappears and reappears all along the kitchen counter. She dashes over to Jesse and rattles a tin in obvious delight. “Real biscuits, luv! Makes a nice change from the old Swiss base, don’t it?”

“You been here long?” Jesse asks as he sits at the kitchen table. Karma wedges himself under his chair, facing the door. “Don’t suppose you picked up any coffee in town?”

Lena wrinkles her nose before grinning and throwing a wink his way. “Got your favourites already. Had a feeling you’d be showing up, sooner or later.”

“Yer ‘feelings’ tell ya about anybody else?”

She purses her lips in thought. “Rein and Brigitte are making their way over from the German Electorates, and Angie’s already set up shop in medical. Torb will be down from Sveden inna bit, he’s got other stuff that needs doing first. Oh! And Fareeha’s got in contact!”

“Yeah? How’s she doin’?” Jesse asks as Lena sets two steaming mugs down on the table along with the biscuit tin, which she immediately opens and rifles through.

“You not kept up with her or something?” she asks as her dæmon appears at her elbow and steals a biscuit to nibble on.

“Weren’t always safe to call, no tellin’ who can be listenin’ in on transceiver calls.” He huffs as Lena gives him a gentle look. Even her dæmon scooches forward to look at him with big brown eyes full of understanding. “Yer like a dog with a bone sometimes, Oxton.”

“Overwatch isn’t what it used to be but we can help you, if there’s something. You don’t always have to be such a stubborn arse about asking for help.”

“I’m told it’s part of my charm,” Jesse says with a lopsided grin. Lena’s intense look doesn’t let up even a little, and Jesse fingers the brim of his hat as he tries not to let his consternation show. “I’ve been gettin’ myself into trouble, but I ain’t found a situation yet that I couldn’t get myself out of. That ever changes, I’ll let ya know.”

Lena huffs but leans back again. “Well, Fareeha’s alright. Won’t be coming around for a while, she’s got her own business in Egypt, but she says she’ll help us on the sly when she can. I think that’s everyone that’s answered.” She looks down into her tea and doesn’t say what they’re both thinking — they’ve barely enough for a strike team. “It won’t be like it used to, but maybe that’s a good thing?” she says softly instead.

“Couldn’t be any worse,” Jesse says lowly.

Lena gives him a long look, tapping rapidly on the casing of her chronal accelerator. “If we do good, it’s what they would have wanted, right? Forget all the politics — that’s what Overwatch was supposed to be about. Doing good and helping people. We do that and I think we’ll be alright.”

“Should put ya in front of the UN, darlin’,” Jesse says with a chuckle. Lena wrinkles her nose while her dæmon pretends to gag. “Hey, ya got even this old dog thinking the Recall’s a good idea, imagine what ya could do with a room full of politicians.”

“Ugh, can you even imagine? Me, in front of all those people?” Lena and her dæmon give theatrical shudders. “No thanks, luv. I’d much rather be here helping you lot actually do stuff instead of just talking about it.”

“I am glad that we are in agreement.”

Lena whips her head around and gasps loudly, bolting out of her chair before Jesse can even see who spoke. She’s hugging them with a lot of enthusiasm though — before she draws back and punches them in the arm, that is. “You utter _arse_!” she says. “You didn’t say you were coming!”

Jesse gets up from the table and is finally able to see Genji, rubbing at his arm and looking pretty sheepish for a man with his face hidden. “I had important matters to attend to before I could come,” he says. Genji waves at Jesse, who tips his hat. He’s probably grinning like a fool, but his heart can’t help but lift at seeing his old friend again.

Karma huffs at Jesse’s side but he’s only put out that he can’t see Genji’s dæmon. She’s always been a hard one to pin down though.

“Winston said you would be here,” Genji says to Lena. “I should have known you would not wait long before you had tea.”

“Best way to make a base feel like home,” Lena says, her grin unrepentant. “I haven’t seen you in ages, luv, where _have_ you been? And what’s so important you couldn’t give us a quick call?”

“I had to be sure he would come first,” Genji says. He’s almost vibrating with excitement, bouncing on his toes. “I had hoped so—”

“Who’s this?” Lena asks as she darts around Genji. She sticks her head through the open doorway, her dæmon perched on her shoulder. “Hey there, stranger!”

“This is my brother.” Lena steps back to let the newcomer in as Genji introduces him. “Jesse, Lena, this is Hanzo.”

The handsome stranger Jesse had saved back in Paris steps into the kitchen of Watchpoint: Gebraltarik. McCree feels strangely disconnected from the scene as he watches Lena grin and stick her hand out for him to shake. He’s sure he’s feeling _something_ but exactly what he’s feeling, he couldn’t name with a gun to his head. Genji’s brother had been a spectre looming over him for as long as Jesse had known him, and he’d had all sorts of thoughts about what he’d do if he ever caught the man. McCree can’t recall a single plan now. He can’t even decide if he should tip his hat to him or not.

The stranger — _Hanzo Shimada_ — flicks those dark eyes of his from Lena’s hand, left to hover in mid-air unacknowledged, then past her into the kitchen. Their eyes meet and it’s one of the most intensely awkward moments of Jesse McCree’s life.

“Uh,” Jesse says. Hanzo spins on his heel and leaves. “Aw, hell.”

***

“Wait up!” the woman calls out behind him. Hanzo’s stride does not so much as pause. It does not matter however as she literally appears in a blink in front of him. It is startling but Hanzo schools his face into a disdainful scowl. “Excuse me,” he says, trying to push past her.

“Just hang on a tick!” she says cheerily, seemingly not deterred in the slightest. “Haven’t seen you around before. Name’s Lena! Genji said you’re his brother, right?”

Hanzo stops and scrutinises the woman in front of him and the capuchin dæmon perched on her shoulder. She has unkempt brown hair and is wearing what are clearly pajama bottoms covered in smiling rainbows. She has something blue and glowing strapped to her chest — whatever allows her to jump so rapidly, doubtless. She’s smiling widely at him for some reason Hanzo cannot fathom.

“I am,” Hanzo answers, lifting his chin even as his heart sinks with shame.

“Cool!” she exclaims, which Hanzo did not expect. “Me and Genji weren’t close or anything way back when, but I saw him with that sword of his when our strike team took on Doomfist.” She swings her arm in wide arcs as her dæmon provides improbable side effects. “So cool! Almost saved Numbani all by himself, though I like to think I helped a little. Can you do the thing with the dragon too? Thought it was his dæmon first time—”

Hanzo tries not to let his flinch show but it is too late. Her dæmon tugs at her earlobe, hissing something at her, and her eyes go comically wide. “I really stuck my foot in it, didn’t I? I’m so sorry.”

Disgust is preferable to the soft, sincere pity in this stranger’s eyes. “I am not here for Overwatch,” Hanzo grits out. “I do not care to save anyone. I am here because Genji requests it. If he asks me to leave—” _or demands my death_ “—I will go. Do not trouble yourself with these _niceties_.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” she says quietly. Hanzo walks past her. She does not follow.

***

Jesse knows as soon as Hanzo runs off that he’s in for it. Genji all but drags him out into the corridor for an interrogation; hell if he knows where Lena gets to during all this. Excuses like ‘it ain’t what it looks like’ cut no ice with Genji so Jesse’s forced to tell him everything that happened in Paris. With his faceplate down he’s damn near inscrutable, but Jesse can feel the disbelief coming off him in waves. Genji stays quiet until McCree finishes, then he crosses his arms and makes a noise that comes out as a rush of static. “That is — I had not expected that.”

“You’re tellin’ me. I had this image of your brother as—” Jesse cuts himself off before he can say any of the thoughts he’s had since Blackwatch about the elder Shimada and lifts his hat to scrub a hand through his hair “—a very different sorta man.”

“He was. He is. I do not know.” Genji makes another frustrated noise. “He is here because I asked him. I asked him—” Genji’s arms fall to hang limp at his sides. “I asked him because I want to repair what has been done to us. Could I... ask a favour of you, please, McCree?”

Karma brushes up against Jesse’s leg and lets out a great sigh. “More trouble,” the dæmon guesses wryly.

“Hanzo has always had problem with people, and socialising, even when we were children,” Genji says haltingly. “Perhaps you could offer to visit the shooting range with him. Strike up a conversation with him about something, perhaps, I don’t know—”

“You askin’ me to befriend the man?” Jesse says, jamming his hat back on to his head.

“I’m asking you to be _kind_ ,” Genji says. “You were a good friend to me when I needed it. Please, do not hold grudges for my sake.”

Jesse drums his fingers on his hip as he considers his friend. Karma’s glancing up and down the corridor looking for Genji’s dæmon, his spine stiff enough to beat a man with. Goin’ after Hanzo was clearly waking up the wrong passenger, but Genji hadn’t always felt like that. The man Angela had stitched back together wouldn’t have asked this — Jesse kinda doubted that the man he himself had been would have considered it. Kindness for a man like Hanzo.

But his friend was asking it of him now, years after the collapse of Overwatch — years of doing things Jesse weren’t always pride of. He could still face himself in the mirror, knowing he’d done it to survive and wake up with the same number of limbs each morning.

McCree thought of Hanzo too. Morality gets a little less stark when you do the kind of things they did in Blackwatch. Maybe Hanzo wasn’t a good man, but Jesse didn’t have any kind of authority to call him a bad man either. Whatever ghoul he’d imagined the elder Shimada to be, with his dark eyes and goofy laugh and bone-dry humour, Hanzo wasn’t it.

“Alright,” he says. “Alright.”

***

Hanzo’s a hard man to find — not that McCree’s trying to find him. He could probably track him down by the occasional bouts of Nipponese shouting that echo around the base but he’s got more sense than to be walking in on that. No, it’s that Hanzo’s doing his damnedest not to be seen. He’s like a ghost that likes green tea and leaves arrows in the training rooms.

Jesse spends a lot of time down at the shooting range, less to practice and more to fill the day. The report of his gun does a lot to fill the quiet spaces he might otherwise have gone looking for ghosts in. They’re making their way down to the range one morning when Karma comes to a complete stop outside the door. He’s got his ears tilted forward and his tail is a stiff brush behind him; McCree has to keep from reaching for Peacekeeper, fingers twitching at his hip. “Karm?”

“Hanzo’s in there.”

Jesse sucks in a breath. “Anyone else?”

Karma’s ears swivel. “Don’t reckon so. We gonna—?”

“Let’s see what’s what first.”

His dæmon grumbles unhappily as McCree slides his palm over the door lock, opening it with an almost silent hiss. Hanzo is at the far end of the shooting range — he’s out of his jacket and wearing a _gi_ with one shoulder slipped off and tucked into his belt. He’s giving McCree a good eyeful of the dark swirls of the tattoo that curls around the thick muscles of his shoulder and arm, thunderclouds and lightning and something with claws. He draws his bow, taking aim at a bot, and McCree’s mouth goes dry at the strength on display, how the strong flex has the clouds roiling like there’s a storm brewing beneath his skin.

Karma bites at Jesse’s elbow, herding him over to another spot on the range that lets him keep an eye on his companion and the other on the door. If Hanzo knows he’s there, he doesn’t acknowledge him.

Hanzo slips from McCree’s mind as he focusses on shooting and the familiarity of Peacekeeper’s bark, the shock of recoil and the heavy thud of impact. He’d been a good shot in Deadlock — a damned good shot, good enough anyway — and he’d only gotten better with Gabe and Ana’s help. Mostly Ana’s, Jesse could admit with half a smile. His old Blackwatch commander was a hell of a soldier, but there was a reason he carried around two shotguns.

McCree holsters Peacekeeper and reaches for a cigarillo. He concentrates on lighting it rather than thinking about where Gabe’s guns have ended up, how they’re probably nothin’ but rust in the rubble of the old Overwatch HQ. He takes a drag and tips his head back, blowing smoke up at the ceiling. Would he have wanted to be buried with them? Nah, probably not — wasn’t like he was gonna be usin’ them where he’d gone.

“Why do you do that?” Hanzo asks suddenly. Jesse lowers his eyes and sees Hanzo scrutinising him, focussed sharply on the lit end of his cigarillo. “You make yourself an easier target, you must know.”

Jesse takes a slow drag of his cigarillo and breathes out a hazy cloud slowly. “You met Lena yet?” he drawls, words thick as the spices on his tongue. “About-so height, English, gotta enthusiastic way about her?”

“We have spoken, yes,” Hanzo says after a moment with an expression McCree can’t parse.

“You’ll have no doubt noticed the fancy bit of kit she’s got on her chest.” Jesse waits for Hanzo to nod, smoke curling around him. “All I hafta to ask is how many bullets do ya think she can take?”

Hanzo draws in a sharp breath, eyes going wide.

“Course, it all depends where it hits her. Lena likes to run into gunfire n’ she’s quick enough it usually won’t hit her. If she ain’t runnin’ though — and that blue light? Folks in Overwatch used to call it a _kairostic engine_ but Winston calls it a chronal accelerator. Don’t suppose it makes much difference ‘cause without  it, she’s worse’n dead. Then there’s Angie — Doctor Ziegler. Her Valkyrie suit makes her a pretty target.”

Jesse draws down the collar of his shirt, letting Hanzo see the puckered scar below his collarbone. He’d almost bled out before they’d scooped him off the floor and back to the Blackwatch zeppelin. That wasn’t the only close call he’d ever had. He could show Hanzo the scar between his shoulders where the bullet had glanced off his ribs. Or the one in his thigh where it’d just missed nicking the artery.

Hanzo studies his old scar before looking him in the eye, scorching Jesse with the intensity on his face. “And what you did for me at the safe house? You should have run.”

“Oh, probably,” Jesse says glibly to make Hanzo scowl harder. “But I’m lucky, always have been. The moment I stop sharing it is the day I wind up with a bullet between the eyes. And I like ya, Hanzo Shimada, or I liked the man I met in Paris. If he’s anything like the real you, we’ll probably get along real well.”

“But how can you even consider—“ Hanzo starts sharply, his face twisting with some heavy emotions. “I am a fratricide. I _murdered_ your friend.”

“I killed a lotta folks too, Hanzo.”

“It is not the same,” he insists through gritted teeth.

“No, I reckon it ain’t,” Jesse says lowly. Hanzo is looking at him with a face like inevitability, and Jesse breathes out another thick cloud of smoke. “I like ya, but I can’t say I trust ya. So,” he says as he stubs his cigarillo out in his metal palm, “y’ever want a drinking partner, coffee or otherwise, I’ll sit with you. Don’t have to trust a man to do that.”

“You...” Hanzo says before his shoulders slump. “I do not understand you.”

“Ain’t the first to say that,” Jesse says with a sharp grin, “and I doubt you’ll be the last. I only ask that ya consider my offer.”

Hanzo nods, his face inscrutable. Jesse can’t honestly say if Hanzo will take him up on his offer, but he’s done right by Genji. Maybe Hanzo will surprise him, he thinks as he leaves the shooting range. He’s seen stranger things happen in his time.

The next few days are heavy with arguing between the brothers. McCree goes to the shooting range and finds the place littered with arrows; the next time, a katana is left in the sparking chassis of a poor training bot. He avoids the training rooms after that.

It’s a week later, when everything’s settled down, that Hanzo thumps a bottle of cheap vodka down on to the table in front of Jesse while he cleans his gun. He also throws down two cups and then himself into the chair across from him. Hanzo doesn’t say a word as he pours himself a drink and tosses it back, though he does pour McCree one before going for his second.

McCree takes the offered cup and raises it in a silent toast before throwing it back. He grimaces at the burn he feels all the way down his throat — what’d Hanzo put in front of him, paint thinner? He doesn’t complain though, only tries to keep up with Hanzo, who slows his pace a little as he must realise McCree isn’t about to throw him out on his ear.

They don’t talk and it ain’t comfortable. It’s got the edge of something strangely companionable — Jesse wishes for that old telegraph, left back in Paris, and some old ballad to sway along to. He starts to hum, drunken and off-key and only half-remembered, but he grins when Hanzo scowls at him for breaking their unspoken agreement. It obviously ain’t worth the words to chastise him though as Hanzo turns away with an indulgent huff.

Jesse grins wider and croons what words he remembers, leaning back in his chair until his long legs are stretched out and bracket Hanzo’s chair. He gives his ankle a nudge but leaves him be, and Jesse keeps serenading him. He’s drunker than he’s been in a long time, the vodka not burning anymore but settling low and warm in his gut. Or maybe that’s just the feeling Jesse gets when he looks at Hanzo trying to hide his smile behind his cup again as he laughs at McCree’s warbling. Damn, if he ain’t still the prettiest thing Jesse’s ever seen.

The words he needs to tell him that ain’t coming to him, and at some point Jesse’s singing trails off as he’s distracted looking at Hanzo. Hanzo turns to look at him, blinking at the sudden silence. It almost looks like he’s about to speak, and it’s because of Karma that he doesn’t.

Jesse’s dæmon damn near knocks his chair over when he jolts up from where he’s lying over his boots. Karma struggles to his paws in his drunken enthusiasm to get to the door. McCree can’t see what’s got him so hyped up but he can guess — only Genji’s dæmon or gunfire ever gets Karma moving like that.

McCree turns to Hanzo but he’s bolted out of his chair, knocking it over in his haste. A question is already half-formed on Jesse’s tongue when Hanzo looks at him with wide eyes, breath coming too fast. “I—“ he says, and the sharp panicked tone is enough to make Jesse flinch. “I have to go.”

He doesn’t even wait for an acknowledgement — he’s gone before Jesse can even wrap his fuzzy head around his words. He passes Karma in the doorway, almost close enough to touch, and Jesse’s a lot drunker than he thought he was if he’s focussing on that. Karma slumps back at his feet with his head in his paws. McCree digs his hand into his fur as he toasts the empty room and downs the last of his drink.

***

Hanzo doesn't know in what direction he's running but he can't stop. His heart is thumping in his chest hard enough to rattle his ribcage and his knees ache with how hard his feet are hitting the floor, but he can't stop. He needs to get away, needs to run, needs to—

He sees a shadow out of the corner of his eye and he stumbles to a stop. Hanzo grabs the wall, his head spinning as he gasps for breath. He doesn't know if he actually saw something or if it was an apparition conjured by his mind to torment him, but then—

Hanzo sees green eyes at the end of a darkened corridor, deep golden fur and the end of a curling tail. He stares at her for a breathless moment but the dæmon doesn't move, doesn’t speak. She only looks at him, and Hanzo’s hand clenches into a fist against the wall as he grits his teeth. He knows she is judging him, knows what she sees and how she finds him wanting.

A sudden blinding rage overcomes him, tinting the world red. _How dare she!_ "Leave me be!" Hanzo shouts and throws the cup he's still holding at the cat dæmon. It smashes against the wall and he can only feel bitter regret that his aim was not true.

The dæmon disappears as quietly as she came and takes with her Hanzo's anger. It leaves him cold and tired, and he slumps against the wall as a thumping starts up behind his eyes.

Hanzo slides down until he's huddled in on himself, fingers digging into his arms hard enough to bring up bruises. "Let me be. Please. Just leave me."


	3. The Beehive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Productive work, Sweetness, Light.

Hanzo stops avoiding Jesse after that. He seems to make it a point to show up to the shooting range when McCree is there, keeping his own skills sharp while keeping an eye on McCree’s shooting. It takes Jesse a little while to realise they’ve got a silent competition going on, and when he does they both start to take it a little too seriously. They’re evenly matched, which is novel for Jesse; the first time he loses by the slimmest of margins, Hanzo doesn’t hide his smirk, eyes glittering and colour high in his cheeks. Jesse can’t help but feel he’s won with a view like that.

They spend all of their time together to total silence. It might’ve been weird with anybody else but it’s easy with Hanzo. They drink sometimes, though for both their sakes McCree gets the good whiskey he has stashed in his room. Mostly though, Jesse will clean his gun and Hanzo will service his bow, or they’ll both read dog-eared dime novels someone left on base. Sometimes Jesse fills the silence by humming and whistling, a couple of bars of a song that’ll make Hanzo glance up.

McCree doesn’t ask any of the questions he feels clogging up his throat — who taught him how to shoot and why a bow. What happened with his legs, what happened with Genji. What happened to his dæmon?

Hanzo quickly becomes McCree’s little oasis of calm — something he really appreciates as the base starts filling with people. There are some new faces, and so _young_. It makes Jesse feel indescribably old to look at the little kid with the MEKA, snapping her gum and twirling her pistols, still looking like she thinks she’s invincible. Angry too, because of that inexplicable urge he gets to send her home.

Jesse just about bites through his cigarillo to keep from saying somethin’ when he sees Hana and Lúcio being shown around the base. Like he’s got any right to object after what he did in Blackwatch. His practical side, sounding like Reyes, tells him they can’t afford to be choosy. The voice that sounds like Morrison tells him if they can fight, they can be soldiers. He can’t argue with either, not really, and McCree can’t decide if that makes him want to lash out at the ghosts of dead men or get blackout drunk or fuck his problems away. It makes him grateful there’s a man his own age around base, regardless.

Torbjörn shows up on base with a bag of tools and a rusted old Bastion unit that’s clearly a veteran of the Omnic Crisis. That fact is only slightly less strange than the fact that the omnic has a dæmon. Torbjörn scowls and mumbles vaguely into his beard, once he’s reassured them and they’ve put their weapons away, and nobody knows quite what to think as Brigitte casts a critical eye over the stray her father’s dragged in.

Brigitte looks over at Torbjörn and grins at him. “He’s gonna need weeding, _pappa_.”

Torbjörn almost seems grateful when he spots McCree’s prosthesis and drags him away to the workshop Winston had renovated ahead of his return.

Detaching his arm _hurts_ , makes his phantom fingers start to cramp. Jesse spends most tune-ups trying to unclench his hand and gritting his teeth when he can’t, muttering darkly to himself that it “duele que te cagas” as his arm throbs with his heartbeat. Brigitte talks to him to try and take his mind off it, while gently plucking the vegetation from the Bastion unit’s joints, but Jesse’s chewed his cigarillo down to a stub by the time Torbjörn’s reattaching his arm. McCree groans as he’s finally able to unclench his fingers, the movement smooth as butter. “Thanks, Torb. Dunno what I’d do without ya.”

“Look after yer arm better,” Torbjörn says, shaking a wrench at him. “Not always gonna be around to keep yer arse from rusting, lad.”

“Hardly young enough to still be called ‘lad’,” Jesse protests. Torbjörn gives him a long look from the other side of his workbench. They’ve never talked about the year Torbjörn spent under cover in Deadlock. How he’d known Jesse when he wasn’t yet 16, when his gun hadn’t yet started to weigh on him and he’d strutted around like he couldn’t be killed. Jesse hadn’t paid much mind to him, the same way most of the world didn’t take note of Overwatch’s Chief Engineer. Not when their favourite golden boy Jack was there, or their favourite villain Reyes. Torbjörn had taken note of him though; at some point sharp eyes mostly hidden by thick blond hair had seen the skinny kid with a knack for shooting and a half-wild dæmon and had seen a boy worth something.

“Young enough,” Torbjörn grunts and turns away. His hermit crab dæmon clicks her claws at Karma when he gets too close to the omnic head she uses as a shell. Brigitte’s bee dæmon laughs and buzzes around Karma’s ears as he pretends to snap at him.

“Aw, Torb, feelin’ paternal? That why you brought along your omnic friend?”

They beat a hasty retreat when Torbjörn grabs at his wrench again with intent. McCree doesn’t see much of the Bastion unit until a couple of days later as he’s strolling over towards the courtyard for a cigarillo and some sunshine, and they find Torbjörn’s omnic with the other robot already there.

Genji had been vibrating outta his skin when he introduced his master, a Shambali monk and the apparent reason behind his sudden interest in forgiveness. Jesse hadn’t spoken much to Zenyatta but the omnic waved at him now. “Howdy,” McCree says, walking over and tipping his hat to them both before he can think about it too much.

“Greetings, McCree,” Zenyatta says. The Bastion unit beeps in greeting but is otherwise more interested in the little patch of earth its knelt beside. Jesse bites down on his cigarillo as the omnic digs its hand into the dirt, but it only scoops some up before gently removing a flower from its pot and placing it into the divot. Its dæmon hops along its chassis, twittering to itself, and the omnic goes about its little bit of landscaping with cheerful whistles and bleeps.

“Didn’t know omnics had an interest in gardening,” Jesse says.

Zenyatta tilts his head. “We are as varied as individuals as humans are,” he says mildly, though Jesse can’t help but feel chastised. “Bastion enjoys green and growing things, the differences between plants, how they change with the seasons. It was saddened there was no such place on this base so we acquired some plants it could tend.”

“Ya took it into town?” Jesse says incredulously.

“Ah, no. I bought them with Lena’s assistance.” The Bastion unit — Bastion, Jesse corrects himself — beeps at them. “Lena and Winston have been very generous in their welcome, though they were not informed of Bastion’s intention to join Overwatch before its arrival.”

“Ain’t surprising. Torbjörn would’ve had to explain why he was bringing it, and all that before he even got to its— uh—” McCree gestured at the little bird hopping along the neat rows of flowers before it fluttered over to Karma. He gave the omnic’s dæmon a suspicious look, unsure how to react. “Decided _dæmon-ness_. Hell, I’ve seen it and I still don’t believe it.”

“Bastion is a marvel,” Zenyatta says, folding his hands together. “Ganymede and it are proof that omnics and humans are as alike as we are different.”

Jesse snorts as Karma finally lowers his head to give the bright yellow bird a sniff. “Ganymede, huh? It’s a pleasure to meet ya, bitesize,” he says.

It fluffs up all its feather and turns into a pigeon, retreating to Bastion’s turret to peer down at Karma. Bastion moves to stand, chittering excitedly at Zenyatta with its dæmon at its shoulder, flinging dirt from its hand as it gestures at its flower bed. It bears about as much resemblance to the Bastion units of the Crisis as Jesse does, and he ain’t talking about the rust and moss he can see growing in the gaps of its chassis.

McCree feels himself start to relax and Karma’s hackles start to lower. As they watch, Ganymede changes into a crow and then a rooster, like a bright-eyed kid with too much curiosity to stick to one form for long. It ain’t so strange to think of Torbjörn coming across Bastion somewhere, more rust than robot with an Unsettled dæmon on its shoulder, and wanting to keep it safe.

“Y’get any more trouble, ya let me know,” Jesse says to Zenyatta, who nods. He also looks at Bastion, looking him in the optics. The omnic tilts its head in a curiously bird-like gesture. “Y’wanna help us, n’ Overwatch, then yer part of the team.”

Bastion bleeps with joy. Zenyatta laughs at his friend’s exuberant little bounces, how Ganymede flutters at its shoulder. “Thank you, McCree, it is a kind offer,” Zenyatta says, making Jesse duck his head and mumble excuses. “We have been welcomed, however, and when we have not been there is cause.”

“Who—?”

“Our friend Hanzo.”

Jesse’s eyes flick over to Ganymede. “Oh,” he and Karma say.

“Our arrivals have both caused him pain — Bastion’s for reminding him of his loss and myself for reminding him of the reason,” Zenyatta says gently, his orbs slowing as he seems to grow sad without his face changing expression. “I have attempted to speak with him, to offer some small help like I did for Genji. He does not yet think himself deserving of help and so rejects it.”

“I don’t think anyone that knew Genji from before would call what ya did small. Man’s a whole new person.” Jesse contemplates his next words carefully, rolling them around on his tongue until he figured out how to say what he wanted. “Yer obviously good, but Hanzo’s got a hurt none of us standing here can understand. How’d you reckon on helping him?”

Zenyatta tilts his head as he regards him. “Tell me, do you consider the spider superior to yourself?” he asks, seemingly apropos nothing. “How about the octopus? I think they would look at you with pity, a poor creature with only half of his limbs. You do not see yourself that way, however. You do not even consider mourning the loss because for you there has been no loss. While it is true that I do not have a dæmon, I do not feel their absence and it does not pain me. I know no other way of being.” Zenyatta tilts his head the other way. “Have I made you uncomfortable?”

“Uh,” McCree says, scratching at the back of his neck. Karma huffs at his side. “Just ain’t polite, pointing it out.” Truth be told, discussing Zenyatta’s lack of a dæmon gave Jesse the same itching feeling as the thought of anyone touching Karma.

“I have observed this discomfort in many people when the topic of dæmons dying is brought up. I have felt loss though,” Zenyatta says, his voice echoing strangely. “My heart’s closest companion is gone. If it will help others to share my pain, I will do so and gladly. To help Hanzo feel less alone, and that he is deserving.”

“Hanzo feels lonely?” McCree asks, and immediately feels the fool for picking out that part. Karma gnaws at the skin of his wrist.

Zenyatta only chuckles. “You’re a deadeye, are you not? Watch, observe. Draw your own conclusions.” He turns as Bastion beeps something that almost sounds like a question. “Of course, my friend. Now then, McCree, what do you know about planting vegetables?”

***

McCree ain’t best pleased. Zenyatta shouldn’t have had to tell him Hanzo was having issues with the others on base. He’s got better eyes than that, and it chafes something fierce that he’d let down a friend like that.

McCree grunts around his cigarillo, taking a moment to mull over the word in his head. Yeah, Hanzo was his friend. Karma looks over at him as the disbelief comes off him in waves. “Still don’t trust him,” Jesse mutters more out of stubbornness than conviction. The pair of them are sat on the roof of Watchpoint: Gebraltarik, where Jesse’s watching the sun sink lower in the red sky and Karma’s watching his back. The light picks out all the russet in his dæmon’s fur, setting him ablaze, until the last sliver of the sun disappears beneath the sea. The base is dark around them for a moment until the anbaric lights start to flicker on, though the roof remains shadowed. “Thanks, Athena.”

Jesse aimed to do right by his friends, always. With that in mind, he’d watched Hanzo like he had secrets written in the dark lines of his tattoo, though he tries to be subtle about it. Karma keeps an eye out when McCree’s supposed to be shooting or watching TV. He catches a lot of those private moments when Hanzo thinks he’s alone; Jesse’s hopelessly charmed when he sees Hanzo wrinkle his nose at the mess in the rec room and how nobody’d been moving to clean it. How he’d tried to tidy up without looking like he’s doing it, though he did sling a wayward cushion at his brother and bark something in Nipponese that makes Genji reply petulantly over his shoulder before he goes back to trying to beat Hana at the game they’d been playing.

McCree had seen a lot of stuff he didn’t like too. Hana’d given Hanzo a filthy look when he’d walked past and grabbed her empty soda bottle. She’s become good friends with Genji since she joined up, but whatever he’s told her about his brother she’s clearly got her own ideas and it’s got her back up. Jesse’s pretty sure that he’s seen Lena and Lúcio get up and leave when Hanzo walks into a room, but D.Va and D.Mon will get these identical snarls when they see Hanzo and stand their ground. She ain’t a bad kid by any stretch — Jesse’d even earned himself a friend when he’d made Hana syrupy pancakes as she’d stumbled into the kitchen one morning half-dead from streaming all night.

The worst part is that Hanzo knows. Jesse doesn’t think he’s seen him talking to anybody except himself and Genji. Zenyatta tries but he’s right; a minute in and Hanzo looks ready to climb the walls to escape. More often than not, it’s after their ‘talks’ that Hanzo seeks McCree out and they sit in a silence so oppressive Jesse doesn’t dare whistle.

The others mostly avoid Hanzo — though come to think of it, no one in the new Overwatch is terribly friendly. McCree’s never known the rec room in any base to be quiet and empty for so long; no movie night, no book clubs, nothing.

Jesse chews on his cigarillo in thought. Angela, Torbjörn and Winston like to stay in their labs but that ain’t unusual. Lena, who’d hugged him ‘til his ribs creaked, hasn’t done any more than offer the new kids some small talk. That ain’t like her. Used to be you couldn’t stray within twenty feet of the kitchen without her offering you a cup of tea, didn’t matter who you were; now most of ‘em eat elsewhere, walking around the table like it’s nothing more than an obstacle on the way to the fridge.

Even Hana had spent a long couple of moments blinking at him when he’d offered to make her pancakes until McCree felt like a real fool and almost apologised. Then she’d smiled, big and surprised, and sat at the table. There’s some hope for the new Overwatch — but if all Hanzo’s getting is silence and scowls, McCree has to wonder when they’ll wake up one morning to find him gone. He can’t stop thinking about the handsome stranger he’d met in Paris, alone and hunted. No tellin’ how long he’d survive like that, especially if that group Talon decides to _persuade_ him again.

“Should pack it in now while the going’s still good,” Jesse murmurs aloud as he stubs his cigarillo out on the roof. Karma snorts as he shakes out his fur and follows him down off the roof because he knows Jesse’s seeing this through, probably to another bitter end. McCree can’t exactly go round startin’ clubs and chattin’ though. So they watch, and they wait.

Nothing could have prepared him for walking into the kitchen one morning and seeing Hanzo stood at the counter in only a pair of loose pants and an apron. Jesse just about trips over his own damn feet staring at his tattoo and all the muscles of his back on display. Hanzo looks at him evenly, with only the tiny uptick at the corner of his mouth to show he’s laughing at him.

“Mornin’,” Jesse says, scratching at the back of his neck. He edges past him to the coffee machine, where a half-full carafe is sitting — he gets so close he can see the sweat on the nape of Hanzo’s neck, feel the warmth from the damp skin of his back. “Any reason for the get-up this morning?”

“Genji and I were training,” Hanzo says as the rice cooker beside him beeps and he scoops up several spoonfuls into two bowls. He turns and quirks a brow at him, and Karma has to nudge Jesse to get him to look away.

“Used to seeing you dressed more, uh, practically.”

“Now he is _practically_ naked,” Genji grumbles from the table. Jesse’s a little embarrassed that he didn’t spot him — or Lena with her cereal, or Hana and the biggest mug of coffee he’s ever seen. McCree tries to play it off, nodding at the three of them and getting a couple of sleepy nods in return, but he can feel the back of his neck growing hot.

He turns back to his coffee but not before Jesse pulls on Karma’s ear and gives him a sharp look. His dæmon can only give him a confused blink, as surprised as he is that they hadn’t noticed them sitting at the table.

Hanzo snorts as he fetches _nattō_ from the fridge. “Before you laugh, Genji, you will recall only one of us has their ass hanging out right now.”

They start to bicker in Nipponese, and it’s only due to Jesse’s long friendship with Genji and his intensive studying of Hanzo that he knows it ain’t a serious argument; he knows what both of them look like when they’re pissed. Neither Shimada has their dæmon present so it’s the subtler things that give it away, how Genji flaps his hands and how Hanzo turns his back to his brother and finishes preparing their breakfast with soft eyes.

McCree likes gentler expressions on him, how it softens the harsh lines of his jaw and the tension around his eyes. Hanzo’s got freckles, if you look close enough, and there’s a faint mole just behind his right ear that Jesse’s inordinately fond of. He’s probably staring, Jesse realises later than he should, but it’s hard work tearing his eyes away. Hanzo even takes off his apron and leaves it neatly folded over the back of a chair, and McCree can barely recall why he’s in the kitchen on account of being distracted by his bare chest.

The Shimadas leave with their breakfast, Genji thumping Hanzo in the shoulder as soon as he gets close enough. McCree blinks at the doorway after they’re gone until he remembers, _coffee,_ but then he catches the looks on Hana and Lena’s faces.

Hana’s scowling at the doorway then down at her coffee. McCree’s not sure how awake she actually is, and he’s pretty sure he can see her dæmon snoring in her lap. Lena’s looking at him though, a thoughtful frown clouding her face, her dæmon Rayleigh perched on her shoulder and looking between Jesse and the kitchen doorway. “What?” Jesse asks, Karma coming out from behind him to give Rayleigh a filthy look.

Lena taps her fingers against the table. “I just don’t know why you’re trying so hard to be his friend.”

“I—” Whatever he’d been expecting, honesty probably wasn’t it.

“Did Hanzo ever tell you why he’s here?” Lena continues. “Genji asked him — the moment Genji changes his mind, or Hanzo changes his, he’s gonna disappear. I’ll betcha anything. I’m just saying, Jes, he’s already got one foot out the door. Best not to waste your time.”

Karma’s got his hackles up, claws clicking against the kitchen tile as he stalks forward. “This ‘cause of his dæmon?” he demands.

“You know it isn’t,” Rayleigh says, jumping from Lena’s shoulder to look down at him from the table. His tail flicks within biting distance and McCree’s teeth ache.

“Y’don’t think we should be giving him more reasons to stay?” Jesse growls.

Lena gives him a flat look. “All the friends in the world aren’t gonna keep him from leaving if that’s what he wants,” she says. Her chair scrapes across the floor as she goes to put her cereal bowl in the sink. “Not all of us have got that kinda luxury, leaving,” she says, leaning back against the counter with her arms folded over her chronal accelerator. McCree mirrors her — they’re not talking about Hanzo any more.

“There’s only one person who knows how the ol’ ticker works. I can travel all over but every six weeks, regular as anything, I’m back at Winston’s getting a tune up. And where’s Winston gonna go ‘cept back to the moon? Not many people have ever seen a línghóu, can you imagine what they’d think? He’s been living here in Gebraltarik the past five years — and so’ve I, pretty much. Overwatch is the only lot with the kind of resources you’d need to fix it or build another. And who’d want to? I ain’t anything special — just temporally unstuck. So I’m stuck with Overwatch and they’re stuck with me.”

Lena’s folding in on herself, her arms moving to hug herself and try to keep herself together. Her dæmon leaps from the table and scrambles on to her shoulder, burying his face in her cheek. She smiles weakly and looks back at Jesse. “If Hanzo wants to leave,” she says, “then that’s what happens and I’ll not waste any tears trying to change that. When you’re stuck, you learn to love those who stay.”

“Aw, darlin’,” Jesse says. He puts his arm around Lena and she leans into his shoulder. She ain’t cryin’, true to her word, but her mouth’s all twisted and he doesn’t think it’d take much. McCree rubs her arm, pulling her in tighter. “How long’s this been eatin’ at you?”

“Couldn’t tell you, luv — time’s a little squiffy when you’re me.” Lena laughs, scrubbing at her red eyes. “You know, I thought for a while that how you left was the worst way. Just upped and went without so much as a backward glance, but... people were leaving well before the end. Torbjörn went home to see his family and still wasn’t back after two months, and Angie spent more time in her clinic than on base.” She sniffs loudly. “Y-you’d... you’d see bits of them still hanging about, little shadows of them. The kind of stuff that lets you cling to hope. ‘She can’t have left! Angie’s book is still in the rec room!’ And you keep thinking it, even though you know it’s stupid. At least with you, I couldn’t do that. You were just... gone.”

McCree puts his other arm around her and pulls her into a hug. “It all kinda went to shit, didn’t it?” he says quietly. “I ain’t gonna promise I won’t leave again, you deserve better than that, but I’ll tell ya next time. That I can promise.”

“It’s not like I don’t know _why_ ,” Lena says with her nose in Jesse’s shirt. “Shit, I think I would have run for it too if I’d lost my arm like that and Reyes didn’t even—”

“Yeah, but it weren’t fair on you. Next time you’ll get yer goodbyes. I only ask that—” Jesse pauses for a second. “Y’gotta help me, sweetheart. Help me make Overwatch somewhere worth stayin’ this time.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Lena burrows further into his shirt. Jesse just holds her, rubbing his prosthetic hand over her back. Hana’s left at some point and taken her mug with her — it’s just them in the kitchen, surrounded by the quiet and more ghosts than they can count.

***

Lena’s chair scrapes across the kitchen and Hanzo reels away from the open door. There is a sickening moment where he thinks he has been caught eavesdropping — he wasn’t, he hadn’t meant, he’d only wanted to come back for a spoon — but Lena's steps don't get any closer. He flees before they can find him standing there.

Hanzo doesn’t look where he is going, doesn’t have a place in mind other than _away._ He gets thoroughly lost in the warren-like corridors of the Watchpoint, and only then can he begin to take deep breaths. The weight in his stomach does not lift; Hanzo can still hear Lena, her question to McCree ringing in his ears.

_“I just don’t know why you’re trying so hard to be his friend.”_

Yesterday, Hanzo would have denied they were friends. Men such as Hanzo do not have friends — allies perhaps, enemies certainly. McCree does not deny it, however, and hearing it makes Hanzo's heart stutter for a reason he does not understand. Now, he has no idea.

_“This ‘cause of his dæmon?”_

Hanzo presses the back of his hand to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut as he fights against the rising nausea and the embarrassing urge to cry, or scream. He hadn't heard the reply, doesn't need to. This will end the same way it has so many times before; McCree will sneer and turn away, and Hanzo will be alone again.

He will survive. He has survived much worse, Hanzo tells himself as he starts stumbling down the corridor again, his palms slick with sweat and legs aching.

Hanzo almost runs face first into someone. His immediate bone-shaking worry is that McCree has found him, and he can feel himself start to go red from his hairline down to his chest. It takes a lot of strength to look up and he blinks for a moment as he realises it is Satya looking down at him, unfazed as ever. He tries to excuse himself but the words don’t come. How undignified he must look, gaping at her and blushing like a chastised schoolboy.

Hanzo bites down on his lip hard as he strong-arms the tears back down, swallows them with the ease of long practice. He hasn’t cried since he was a boy, and he’s ashamed at the urge to start now. Simply because he might have had a friend, and lost him. _Pathetic_.

The movement of Satya’s hand catches his eye and he flinches away, irrationally scared that she might touch him. Satya only tucks a lock behind her ear. She is still looking coolly at him and he dreads to think what she sees. “Would you like to sit with me?”

Hanzo blinks at her.

“I am headed to my room. Come.”

Satya moves around him, walking away without a backwards glance, and Hanzo trails behind her. He cannot think why — except that she had looked at him without pity or disgust. He has just about resolved to keep walking when they arrive outside her room. Satya opens her door with only a brief look over her shoulder at him.

Her room is tidy but not cold. Hanzo finds himself surprised to see the comfortable chairs, the well-used tea set on her desk — even if every item on it is perfectly lined up with the edges, all neatly organised. “I have tea, if you would like some. It will take time to brew though,” Satya says. “Sit.” She points at the chair but doesn’t wait to see if he actually does as she turns away to make the tea. Hanzo takes another long look around her room before he sits so he can feel in control of something.

Satya’s spider dæmon crawls down her arm — from where, Hanzo can only guess — and skitters across the desk. He’s a tiny creature but he moves fast, climbing the wall over the desk up to the ceiling. “Ready?” he asks.

Hanzo looks over at Satya in confusion. “Watch,” is all Satya says.

Her dæmon begins to spin a web across half of her room. It’s terrifying to watch, convinced as Hanzo is that such a little dæmon cannot handle a structure of that size — it will collapse, the fragile silk will tear. His shoulders tense up and he cannot breathe as he prepares for inevitable disaster. However, her dæmon is just as skilled an architect as Satya is and the web doesn’t collapse as the spiral slowly takes shape.

Hanzo gradually relaxes, then calms further. There’s something hypnotic about watching the spider dæmon going around and around as he creates a beautiful web. Hanzo’s thoughts begin to quiet, and the muscles in his shoulders and legs throb as he unwinds and stops holding himself so rigidly. He lets out a long breath through pursed lips.

Satya hands him a cup of tea as her dæmon finishes his web. “Thank you,” Hanzo says faintly.

“You are welcome.”

They drink their tea in silence. Satya’s dæmon returns to her shoulder, but with nothing to focus on Hanzo cannot help but realise that he is sat in only the loose pants he trained in this morning. He does not know Satya at all — does not know anyone in Overwatch. What will they think, what will they say, what will Satya _tell_ them—

“I have faced unkindness before,” Satya says suddenly. Hanzo looks at her and blinks. “A lot of superstition surrounds people with invertebrate dæmons. I have never known any of it to be true but regardless it exists.” She takes a sip of her tea. “I grew up being told that those people were wrong, that they didn’t have emotions and couldn’t love others. I had to unlearn much. It was... difficult but to do otherwise would be untenable.”

“I do not understand,” Hanzo says. He’s gripping his cup so hard his fingers ache. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I was also told about people without dæmons,” Satya says.

Hanzo recoils hard enough that tea spills on to his pants. “I—” He puts the cup down with a clatter on the desk before his shaking hands can drop it. “Why would you—”

“I have no reason to suspect that they were any more correct in this matter.” Satya places a warm hand on Hanzo’s wrist. There’s still no pity in her eyes but a kind of quiet understanding.

Hanzo can only look back with incomprehension. “It is not the same,” he says softly.

“No, perhaps not.” Satya sits back, her hand slipping from Hanzo’s wrist to hold her tea again. “Would you recommend the book you are reading currently?”

“What?” Hanzo asks. “I... suppose so.”

“Perhaps I shall read it too and we could discuss it.” Satya smiles at his confused silence, the corners of her eyes creasing.

“Are you not at all curious why I was—” Hanzo struggles to find the words to describe when he feels like that, when his thoughts spiral violently downwards and he can’t breath for the anxiety building in his chest.

“Would you like to discuss it?” Satya asks.

“No,” Hanzo answers quickly.

“Then we shall discuss books,” she says with a level of certainty Hanzo admires. “If you would like, of course. We could also have more tea.”

“I think I would like that,” Hanzo says. He shifts in his seat, sitting up straighter. “Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.”

The creases at Satya’s eyes deepened as her smile widens. It feels strange, unpracticed, but Hanzo manages to smile back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> winston is a línghóu, which are similar to the armoured bears or panserbjørne from the books. they are a race of fully sentient gorillas that are native to earth — who also happen to have a research station on the moon — but which do not possess external dæmons like humans do. omnics don't usually have dæmons either but bastion's the exception.
> 
> bias towards invertebrate dæmons is more of an implicit thing in the books — good characters don't get creepy crawly dæmons. a person's personality determines what form a dæmon takes — remember that, it's important.


	4. The Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Messenger, Hierarchy, Disobedience.

Their first outing as a team is to Australia as Winston’s getting reports of worrying signs of activity in the ruins of one of the many Omniums there. Before the Crisis, people called it the Austral Empire; the name died out along with everything else after the whole continent became little more than a irradiated dust bowl.

McCree’s got money on rats, but he’s at their armoured zeppelin ready to go at 0600 hours with his supplies, just the same. Most of the base is comin’ with and he should known better by now than to expect it to be like it was. The Orca, rather than being filled with chatter and the kind of bawdy humour Blackwatch liked before a mission, instead has everyone quietly occupied by their own thoughts while sat as far away from each other as possible.

Jesse sighs and drops heavily into the seat beside Hanzo. Karma jumps up next to him and sprawls across Jesse’s lap. Hanzo looks up at him with wide eyes but doesn’t tell him to move, so Jesse tips his hat to him before pulling it down low over his eyes and burying his hands in his dæmon’s fur. It’ll be a long trip, best to catch some sleep now while he can.

They split into two teams when they arrive, after landing the Orca in the deep shade of a canyon and out of sight. Mercy, Tracer, Torbjörn, Genji, Lúcio and the newly arrived Reinhardt go to check out the Omnium — Lena punches the air and leaps at Reinhardt, who catches her in his arms with an indulgent expression. “Yeah! Just like old times!”

D.Va, Symmetra, Hanzo and McCree are sent to scope out the local wildlife. Zenyatta and Bastion stay with the ship — because as Zenyatta puts it, “it would be unwise.” He waves at them as they climb out of the gorge and then it’s telegraph silence — too much background radiation for a reliable signal.

Hana blows raspberries as soon as the other team is out of earshot. “How come we get given the boring job?” she says while riding atop her MEKA, her heels knocking against the windscreen. The dirt crunches under her MEKA’s heavy tread and they all follow behind as it plows through the scrub heedless of the vegetation gouging her paintwork.

“We would not have been tasked with it if the job were not important,” Hanzo says in a clipped tone. He had received to his orders with a stony face and sharp nod, the kind of thing Reyes would have dreamed of getting back in the day.

Hana’s dæmon Jujak blows raspberries and gets comfy in her lap, and she’s already pulled out her gaming device and is tapping away.

McCree’s shading his eyes and watching Reinhardt’s silhouette until he’s a blurry mass on the horizon. He turns back to his team — and immediately blinks. “Y’sure about that?” he asks Hanzo.

Hanzo scowls and folds his arms over his chest — half of which is bared to the harsh Australian sun, the sleeve of his _gi_ tucked into his belt again. “Am I sure about _what?_ ”

“It’s the better part of an hour to the nearest town. Yer gonna be crispier than a side of bacon if y’don’t cover up. You too, Hana, Satya.”

“Thank you for your concern but I am already wearing sun protection,” Satya says as she walks around him. Hana calls something back to them that sounds a lot like “hell no, cowman,” so it’s just Hanzo and Jesse at the back of the line.

Hanzo tugs his other sleeve up over his shoulder. “Satisfied?” he spits.

He’s still catching a lot of sun though, his cheeks and the back of his neck already flushing hot. Jesse ain’t sure what else he can do for him until Karma pushes his cold nose into his palm. “Yer hat,” he says.

Jesse whisks off his hat and drops it on to Hanzo’s head. He freezes, a rabbit in the headlights, and Jesse’s sure he’s gonna get it. Call him a fool, skewer his hat on an arrow and fire it into the sun. Instead, Hanzo seems to blush harder as he reaches up and gently touches the brim on Jesse’s hat. “Thank you,” he says quietly, and Jesse’s heart does a strange little wobble.

“Yer welcome, darlin’.”

They walk together in silence a little ways behind Satya and Hana. They’re chattering away — about what, Jesse can only guess — but Satya’s dæmon is happily scurrying all over Hana’s MEKA and her deep laughter drifts back to them. McCree opens his mouth a couple of times to say something, anything, but every time he glances over Hanzo’s still skimming his fingertips over the soft leather of Jesse’s hat. It sits a little low over his eyes and the sight makes something in McCree’s chest grow warm and the words die on his tongue.

“Do you know much about living in the desert?” Hanzo asks suddenly.

Jesse takes a moment to answer, blinking at him. “Sure do. Grew up in one. Santa Fe, New Mejico.” The smell of sun-baked earth and the dry crunch of it beneath his boots, the horizon stretching out before him as the deep blue sky kisses the red earth at some indistinct point too far to see. “This ain’t much different.”

“It is nothing like Hanamura,” Hanzo says. He peeks out from under Jesse’s hat, a corner of his mouth ticking up in a small smile. “Will you tell me about your home?”

Jesse’s jaw aches with the force of his smile. “Sure thing, jus’ gimme a moment to think where to start.” He lights a cigarillo and takes a long draw, blowing the cloud out towards that hazy horizon. That was as good a place as any, he figures. “The desert’s big, bigger than you can wrap yer head around. Big enough to swallow you whole and not care — yer just another creature skittering around out there, and if ya don’t respect her she’ll kill ya just as fast as any other. I knew folks that’d lived in the desert so long they knew all the lizards by their first names, so I learnt young and would spend most days out there. Gods, the _freedom_ ya get. Y’could look out to the horizon line and feel like it’d go on forever with nothing and no one to stop ya if ya jus’... started walking and never came back. It’s terrifying, and it’s the best feelin’ in the world.”

“Why did you leave?” Hanzo asks.

McCree gives him a sidelong glance as he breathes out another cloud. “I always knew I wouldn’t die in Santa Fe. Like Mejico, we got hit hard by the Crisis n’ just never recovered. No omnics, but also not much in the way of anything anbaric — folks out there still run naphtha automotives, the kind they haven’t made in roughly a century. They keep ‘em going through sheer damned stubbornness, seems like, but it meant I didn’t see my first holoscreen ‘til Reyes was interrogattin’ me.” He chuckles lowly. “A couple of guys I ran with jumped the border to Texas and came back talkin’ about lights y’could touch and omnics walkin’ the streets like people. Thought they were peddlin’ shit but I also knew that there was somethin’ out there. Guess I wanted to see what was beyond that horizon.”

“Reyes... He was your Blackwatch commander, wasn’t he?”

McCree grunts an affirmative and looks away. He knew what Hanzo was thinking and dreaded him asking. The media had lost their goddamned minds when Overwatch HQ was levelled in that explosion, slinging blame left n’ right without much thought. They‘d all agreed on one thing though; it was Gabriel Reyes and Blackwatch’s fault.

Jesse had jumped ship a couple of years before everything went to shit but he — he didn’t know. Jesse didn’t know if that was something Gabe could do. He was practical and could get downright ruthless if he thought he had to be, and sometimes those two traits lead to the kind of ugliness Blackwatch eventually became notorious for. He probably never would know either. Reyes had died in that explosion, along with Morrison and a couple dozen other people.

What a damn waste.

Hanzo doesn’t ask. When Jesse looks over at him he’s scowling at the ground like it insulted his mother or something. McCree snorts a laugh and bumps their shoulders together. Hanzo blinks up at him. “What about Hanamura?”

“Genji must have told you,” Hanzo says after a moment.

“Maybe he did,” Jesse says with a grin. Hanzo scowls at him and bumps their shoulders again. “Wanna hear it from you though. What’s home like for you?”

“Hanamura is... beautiful. It is famous for its cherry blossoms viewings.” Hanzo pauses. “We would often sneak out as children to go to the arcade, and have competitions over ramen.”

“Sounds nice.”

Hanzo hums in answer and goes back to staring at the ground. Jesse wishes he hadn’t said anything if only it’d get rid of that forlorn look. He looks away to the horizon as the sweat rolls down his neck to soak into his _serape_ , shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun.

Something soft brushes his arm and he looks back to see the trailing end of Hanzo’s hair ribbon drift in the light breeze that sets the dry scrubland rattlin’ and has a lone cloud skidding across the sky. In Paris and around the base Hanzo tied his hair back in topknot, short and practical. The ribbon, beautiful golden silk, contrasts prettily with the grey streaks in his hair and is a better match for the traditional _gi—_ but it makes the undercut and the bridge piercing stand out even more against his aristocratic good looks. A pretty mix of contradictions, traditional and rebellious.

A bird calls overhead and Jesse looks up to watch her wheel across the sky. When he looks back down, Hanzo jerks his head away like he was looking in Jesse’s direction — McCree glances around but can’t think what he was lookin’ at. _Must’ve seen somethin’ in the distance_ , he figures.

“Hey, Junkertown’s up ahead!” Hana calls.

Jesse looks over — and immediately wonders how he didn’t see the rusted fortress squatting like an ugly metal monstrosity in the middle of the Australian Outback. There’s a small shanty town leading up to the main gates to Junkertown but the residents are making themselves scarce. Only two kinds of folks come all the way out here; humanitarians and military, and they’re too well armed to be anything but the latter. They make it all the way up to the gates without so much as glimpsing another person and McCree has to knock on the gates, feeling like a fool. “Hullo?” he calls out when the dull echoing thuds have faded and nobody’s answered.

A hatch all the way up near the top of the entrance opens, but the folks inside Junkertown ain’t any more friendly than those outside it. McCree spends a good five minutes yelling at the sentry that they’re not feds, suits, or cops. His team occupy themselves resting up in the shade the walls of Junkertown with bottles of water kept cool inside Hana’s MEKA.

Hanzo sits in _seiza_ and watches the shanty town with half-lidded eyes. After growling at the sentry’s dæmon, a foul-mouthed gecko that crawls out the hatch just to yell at the pair of them, Karma goes and keeps watch with Hanzo. Jesse does eventually convince the sentry to answer a question for them, if only because they’ll leave faster.

“Any of you folks been out to the old Omnium, the one a couple’a klicks south of here?”

The sentry lets out a loud snort. “Only blokes crazy enough to go there are Junkrat and Roadhog, n’ you won’t find them hangin’ about here. Now piss off!”

The hatch closes with a bang and Jesse turns back to his team with a shrug.

“What is a Junkrat?” Hanzo asks.

“Beats me, darlin’.” Jesse scratches at the back of his neck and glances between the gates and the still-quiet shanty town. “Don’t think we’ll get any answers here either. C’mon, let’s head back. Maybe the others will have been luckier.”

Hana lets out the most agonised groan he’s ever heard from someone not actively dying and flops back on to her MEKA, and promptly yelps when the hot metal burns her through her jumpsuit. She whines when McCree only snorts and laughs at her, while Jujak jumps down from her lap to nip at Karma’s tail. They hang back from Hanzo and Satya, two of them walking together back to the Orca as their dæmons run through the underbrush; Hana’s rabbit dæmon can dart under the sharp twigs and grasping branches but Jesse’s can jump over them.

“You’re pretty close with Shimada, aren’t you?” Hana asks out of nowhere.

Jesse gives her a sideways glance. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

“That’s cool, that’s whatever. I wanted to know though...” She bites her lip as she twirls her hair around a finger. “About his dæmon. It’s weird, right? ‘Cause it’s weird to me.” Hana huffs, scowling down at her lap. “I didn’t know you could, you know, _not_ , until I came here.”

Jesse blinks at her. “They never tell you about people without dæmons?”

“Must’ve missed that lesson when I was busy doing other stuff,” she fires back, rolling her eyes.

“Alright, simmer down there.” Jesse holds up a placating hand. “Just tryin’ to get a lay’a the land.”

Hana huffs and rolls her eyes again, but there’s little hiding the embarrassed flush crawling up her neck. Her dæmon comes hopping out of the undergrowth and her MEKA crouches, barely breaking stride as Jujak jumps back up on to Hana’s lap. She immediately buries her hands in her dæmon’s fur. “I get seriously bad vibes from him but nobody else seems to and it feel like I’m taking crazy pills.”

“It ain’t just you,” Jesse says. Karma trots over and nudges his cold nose into Jesse’s wrist. “Y’see it occasionally in our line of work. Ya just... get used to it. But it ain’t just you.”

“But _how_?” she blurts out. They both shoot looks at Hanzo but he’s walking ahead of them, seemingly oblivious to their choice of topic. “Is he a zombie or something? Some kind of lich?”

“I ain’t—” Jesse huffs, smiling wryly. As a younger man, he remembers demanding something similar from Reyes. “Put it this way then: when is a person dead?”

“When their heart stops,” Jujak says immediately.

McCree waves a hand dismissively. “Angie can restart a heart without so much as blinking.”

“When their brain stops,” Hana says, scowling at him.

He shakes his head. “Y’get people on life support, in comas, no brain waves but a beating heart.”

Hana throws up her hands in defeat. “This is a bullshit riddle, cowman. Fine, when is a person dead then?”

“When I find a good answer, I’ll let ya know.” Jesse chuckles at her immediate exasperation, moving with the kick she aims at his shoulder. “Ya’d do better goin’ to Angie for the technical stuff. What I was told was... sometimes, a dæmon dies but the rest keeps going. Hearts can be restarted but there’s no bringing back a dæmon. Like they don’t know they should be dead.”

They’d done experiments in Blackwatch, since they’d had an abundance of prisoners that wouldn’t be missed much. Killing ‘em was the easy part; bringing ‘em back whole was a little harder. Moira got through a dozen people before someone killed themself and Gabe had to shut her down.

Hana’s dæmon hides his head in her stomach. “Doesn’t that— wouldn’t that hurt?” she asks quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.” McCree buries his hand in Karma’s fur. He recalls he hadn’t liked Reyes’ answer all that much — how can someone live without their dæmon? Walk around with a part of them dead and gone? It made as much sense as someone with half a lung or their stomach rotting away inside of them.

“Hey, Jesse?” Hana says. Jesse hums, looking over to see her running her fingers along her dæmon’s long ears. “Thanks. For not, you know, treating me like a kid.”

“Yer welcome, kid.”

Hana snorts and nudges him in the shoulder again. “Ugh, you’re such asshole.”

“Jus’ part of my charm.” He goes to tip his hat before realising that Hanzo still has it. Hana snorts at him — Jesse’s distracted looking over at Hanzo. He doesn’t have to worry about the twigs scratching his legs but he’s still side-stepping all the pointy vegetation to spare his fancy clothes. It’s a little ridiculous and Jesse snorts at the same time a goofy smile spreads across his face.

“Good friends?” Hana says with a smirk.

Jesse huffs. “Ain’t any harm in lookin’,” he grunts.

Karma snorts and Hana ain’t lookin’ any more convinced. “’Looking’,” she says, making air-quotes and rolling her eyes. “If that’s looking, there was some serious ‘looking’ going on in the kitchen the other morning.”

“Don’t know what ya mean.”

“You looked like you wanted to have him for breakfast, cowman.” Hana cackles at the face he pulls. McCree wishes his hat back so he could have something to hide behind.

“I’m surprised you could see anythin’ round that mug of yours. That amount of coffee will kill ya, kid.”

“Yeah, well, _someone_ was too busy undressing someone else with just his eyes to make me pancakes.”

Their transceivers crackle loudly and Jesse almost leaps out of his skin. A glance ahead and Hanzo’s already turned to look at them. “That ain’t good. Let’s move!” McCree barks, already unholstering his gun and running for the gorge ahead.

He can hear the rapid crunch of footsteps behind him but then Hana comes charging past in her MEKA, whooping and hollerin’. “MEKA leads the way!” she yells as she drops down into the canyon and the sounds of rapid gunfire.

“Dammit, D.Va!” Jesse shouts after her but he’s only left cursing the dust she throws up. He hurls himself down after her, his boots skidding on the scree and his dæmon kicking up a cloud as they hit the ground runnin’.

Two men, tall and heavily armed, are hiding out in the gorge and slinging explosives at the Orca. Bastion’s defending as a turret but his attention is split between keeping the attackers at bay and keeping the explosives from wreckin’ their ride. Zenyatta fires one of his orbs but the skinny, feral-looking fella winds up a cricket bat and sends the orb sailing back, cackling the whole time.

D.Va gets her defence matrix up and starts shooting down the bombs headed for the Orca. It gets her the immediate attention of the men and the skinny asshole starts yelling and pointing at them. His friend, in a leather mask and tattoos with the most unwieldy gun Jesse’s ever seen, starts in their direction, grunting and snorting. McCree takes aim but he’s blindsided by the man’s dæmon and Peacekeeper is knocked from his hand.

Taboos don’t count for much in a knockdown, dirty fight like this; Jesse has to hold back the monstrous-looking boar dæmon that wants nothing more than to sink her tusks into him, slavering and squealing above him. Karma jumps on the boar’s back and sinks his teeth into her thick hide, making the dæmon rear back enough that Jesse can roll away and grab for his gun. He takes aim at the boar and fires twice — the scream she lets out is mostly drowned out by the man’s roar as he charges at them.

D.Va intercepts him, throwing him back and away. “Get owned!”

“Lay off Roadie, ya bastard!” the skinny man yells, leaping up from his cover and hurling a handful of explosives at D.Va. Her defence matrix easily handles them.

Jesse’s more worried for his dæmon — fighting a boar larger than him and two bullets heavier with nothing but murder in her beady eyes. It might’ve been an even fight but a huge rat dæmon jumps out from behind rock and latches on to Karma’s shoulder with gnarled teeth. His dæmon howls as they roll through the dirt, a tangle of hooves and paws and blood-soaked fur.

The world slows down and goes red as McCree grimaces and wipes blood from his eyes. Peacekeeper is limp in his hand — he can’t raise his gun when he could hit his own dæmon. His aim’s good but his heart keeps him frozen in place as the dæmons tear into each other. There’s a smell of hot metal and sun-baked earth; _just like New Mejico._

Something whistles past his ear and the boar squeals as an arrow appears in her flank, followed rapidly by two more. McCree looks away to see Hanzo backlit by the sun at the top of the gorge — and still wearing his hat. He tosses him a quick salute and he thinks he gets a nod in return. The rat dæmon scuttles off with a mangled curse; the boar looks set to stand her ground, sides heaving and foam dripping from her jaws but even she’s quick to turn tail and run when McCree fires a warning shot.

Karma limps his way back to Jesse as Symmetra runs over, hard light glowing at her fingertips. “Shield generator online. You are protected. Now to press our advantage.”

Sym doesn’t look back as she runs in, photon projector in hand. McCree’s right behind her. The tattooed fella has his gun aimed at them as soon as he spots them. Sym ducks behind D.Va while McCree rolls the over way — he thinks he got clear until he stumbles and falls to his knees. Karma’s there, keeping him from keeling over. Jesse presses a hand to his knee and the prosthesis comes back bloody — the pain is still distant though he can feel it creeping up on him slowly through the adrenaline.

The pain is pushed away as a golden light appears in the corner of Jesse’s eye. One of Zen’s orbs, acting as a little floating biotic emitter. It gives McCree enough focus to lift his gun and get off a couple of shots while more of Hanzo’s arrows sail through the air. He hits the tattooed fella in the shoulder and leg, the arrows sinking into the thick armour at his shoulders, and they don’t do anything other than enrage both attackers. The skinny one dashes out from behind their cover, weaving through the bushes and rocks to avoid D.Va’s spray of bullets, moving fast for a guy with a peg leg.

McCree fires at him, clipping his prosthetic arm, and then the skinny fucker is on him. “Fuck you, fuckin’ dumb shit omnic!” he yells as he swings his bat at Zenyatta’s orb. As soon as the biotic emitter sails away, McCree can feel every inch of the burning lines that are scored across his shoulder and thigh. The pain’s enough to take his breath away and his vision immediately goes blurry.

Jesse feels more than sees Karma leap at the man and he can do nothing but watch as the cricket bat comes back around and cracks him across the flank. Karma hits the dirt with a yelp and a whimper, his legs folding under him. Jesse barely has the breath to call out — it’s Hana who screams and turns to help. It’s the wrong thing to do; the tattooed attacker throws out a hook and drags her MEKA close enough that he can press the muzzle of his gun against the underside.

Hana screams as he pulls the trigger. Her MEKA screeches a warning as it ejects her before collapsing at the attacker’s feet. She lands badly, twisting her ankle up the wrong way and landing on her ass hard. McCree reaches for her but the skinny fella drops his cricket bat, grabbing his gun from his waist and jamming the muzzle into Jesse’s temple.

Symmetra and Zenyatta can’t get close between the explosives he’s still throwing around merrily and the dæmons out for blood; the boar shrugs off the laser from Sym’s photon projector like flies. Hana is scrambling backwards away from the tattooed fucker, who’s ripped out the guts of the destroyed MEKA to shove into his gun as ammo. He’s bearing down on her soon enough, snorting and snarling behind his dead-eyed leather mask.

The gun at his head makes painful contact with his face again, bringing McCree’s attention back to his own dilemma. He’s grinning down at Jesse wide enough to show off his crooked and yellowed teeth. “C’mon then. Any last words?”

McCree snarls and spits on his boot. The wind rushes past his ears as the skinny fucker steadies the gun against Jesse’s head. McCree has the thought that this is it, this is what dying is like, when the attacker looks back up the canyon and his eyes bug out. “Hooley dooley!” he yells as he scrambles backwards.

The wind’s picking up, throwing grit into McCree’s eyes as he looks over his shoulder in time to see Hanzo wreathed in thrashing, violent light. “ _Ryuu ga waga teki wo kurau!_ ”

Two massive, ethereal, twisting dragons come roaring out of his bow and directly at Jesse. He gasps with what air he has left in his lungs before they rush over and through him. It’s a feeling beyond describing, like getting caught in a riptide and being pulled under, like drowning; it only lasts a moment but McCree will never forget it so long as he lives. They’re gone in a moment to race down the gorge until they splash against stone and dissipate into sparkling lights like sunlight on waves.

There’s a moment of perfect stillness where nobody moves and hardly breathes, before the Orca rocks forward back on to its landing gear. The attackers snap out of it first and they take off down the canyon like they’re being chased by a pair of ravenous dragons with Zenyatta and Symmetra hoofing it after them.

Hanzo skids to a stop beside McCree and drops to the dirt, throwing his bow aside like it doesn’t mean a thing to him. “McCree, are you OK?” he asks quickly as the terrified shouting echoes and fades.

McCree gapes at him for a moment. All he can think in that moment is that Hanzo’s _gi_ is ruined, the sleeve over his tattoo burnt away and the tattered edges fluttering in the wind still sweeping through the gorge. He wants to laugh, strangely, but Hanzo’s already looking at him with dark eyes full of concern. Jesse clumsily pats at his wrist instead but Hanzo doesn’t look very reassured as the skin around his eyes tighten under the shade of his own damn hat.

The roar of engines fills the canyon and they both jerk their heads around to see the attackers screaming towards them in a metal monstrosity that might have been a motorbike in a previous life. McCree doesn’t know if it’s him that shouts Hanzo’s name or his dæmon; it’s Karma that throws himself at Hanzo, knocking them out of the way of the bike. They sling some last explosives at them before they’re gone, tearing off down the canyon and away into the Australian outback.

Karma rolls off Hanzo as soon as the dust settles but Jesse can feel every inch of where they’d touched. It feels different for everybody, the greatest taboo; for Jesse it _burns_ , sinking beneath his skin like a brand no matter how briefly another’s hands had been on his Karma. He’s shivering fit to shake out of his own skin and Hanzo doesn’t look any better, paler than a ghost with a haunted look in his eyes.

“Are you two OK?” Hana asks, hobbling over to them with her arms full of her dæmon.

McCree ain’t gonna be proud of himself later but he turns on Hana with his lip curling in a snarl and a growl already building in his chest. “Bloody Hellfire!” he barks. She stumbles back a step, eyes going wide. Hanzo places a hand on his shoulder and starts to say his name but Jesse shrugs him off. “What in damnation do y’think yer doing, pulling a stupid stunt like that?”

“You were right behind me, weren’t you?” she yells back, stepping forward again and squaring her jaw. “Zen and Bastion needed our help! What was I supposed to do, sit and twiddle my thumbs?”

“Y’can’t go chargin’ in like that, without a blessed clue what yer rushin’ into,” Jesse grits out. “It was a goddamn fool thing to do and then to come over here like this is a desirable outcome. This ain’t a victory, not by a long shot, and it sure as hell ain’t how we do things when we got people at our back depending on us to do our goddamn jobs right.”

“ _Jesse_ —”

“Y’think ‘cause yer young and you’ve been lucky, that can’t change?” McCree yells right over Hanzo. “You could have _died_ today!”

“Enough,” Satya says in a tone like a guillotine. “There is nothing to gain from this. You both have injuries that need tending. Zenyatta, please assist Hana. Hanzo, you and I will help McCree.”

Satya and Hanzo hoist Jesse to his feet as Hana takes the arm Zenyatta offers her, her jaw set in a stubborn line as she limps away. “Yer bow,” Jesse says, dipping his head at where it still lies discarded. Hanzo purses his lips, obviously torn, and it’s almost enough to make Jesse forgive him for firing a pair of dragons at him. “Karma?”

“I got ya,” Jesse’s dæmon says. He picks up the bow in his teeth with more care than Jesse’s ever seen him exercise with their own equipment and together they limp their way the short distance to the Orca. Hana’s as far away as she can be without sitting in the cockpit or out on the wing, which suits McCree just fine as Hanzo and Satya set him down as gently as they can manage. Karma’s boring holes in him with how hard he’s staring but he can stare all he like far as McCree’s concerned.

Hanzo disappears further into the zeppelin while Satya frowns at the wounds at his shoulder and thigh, bleeding sluggishly through his jeans and throbbing heavily as the adrenaline wanes. “I will need to cut your clothes from you to clean your injuries.”

Jesse still has enough left in him to give Satya a stubborn look. “I ain’t spending the flight home in my unmentionables.”

Satya gives him a long look but nods. “I will clean what I can.”

“You do that,” Jesse grunts. Satya leaves to find some of Angie’s supplies, leaving McCree to lean back and grit his teeth. He rubs his palms over his jeans, trying to wipe away the feel of the boar dæmon’s touch, and it’s only Hanzo’s gentle touch against his arm that makes him realise he’s damn near rubbed his hands raw. “Thanks, sweetheart,” he says when Hanzo hands him a damp cloth to clean his face.

Hanzo makes a choked sound and Jesse looks up as he’s looking away. His cheeks are still pink from the sun despite Jesse’s hat — Jesse snatches it off Hanzo’s head and plops it back on his own. “What was that noise for?”

“I was merely surprised,” Hanzo says to the wall over Jesse’s shoulder. He frowns when McCree makes a questioning noise. “Those endearments.”

“Oh.” McCree looks down between his feet. He rubs at the back of his neck as he glances at Karma for help but his dæmon just flicks his ear. “Ain’t my intention to make ya uncomfortable. Sorry.”

“If I were uncomfortable, I would have said so in Paris,” Hanzo grits out.

They haven’t talked about Paris. Jesse’s wondered if Hanzo’s thinks about it at all, and what he thinks of that stranger now that he knows him a little better. Sometimes he wonders where the cocky bastard was that’d complained about the shitty coffee, giggle-snorted at his terrible flirting, gave him a look like thunder when Jesse had refused to run. But then he’d look over at Genji and he gets a pretty good idea.

McCree doesn’t know when he decided to stop calling Hanzo _sugar_ and _darling_ but evidently he had, if Hanzo was surprised by it. Ain’t been flirtin’ with him either. McCree looks back up at Hanzo, who’s still staring at the wall like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. He hasn’t told him to stop with the endearments and Jesse knows he could, though he isn’t sure if that’s supposed to be his tacit permission to continue. Jesse isn’t even sure he wants to except that it feels right to call Hanzo _sweetheart_ and more besides.

“OK,” Jesse says. He has to roll the thoughts around in his head a little, try to figure out where he stands. McCree’s starting to realise he has a blindspot a mile wide when it comes to Shimada Hanzo and that he could probably study Hanzo for the rest of his days and not fully understand him.

Satya snaps on a pair of gloves, startling the both of them from their thoughts. “This will hurt. Are you prepared, McCree?”

“Jus’ get it over quick,” Jesse mutters, already gritting his teeth. He damn near gives himself whiplash with how fast he turns to look at Hanzo as he rises from where he’s been crouched at Jesse’s side. He reaches for Hanzo’s arm but stops just shy of touching him. “Stay?”

Hanzo gives him a puzzled look. “You want me to help?” He glances at Satya.

“I do not require assistance,” she says as she gets out a pair of sterilised tweezers.

“I ain’t askin’ you to _help,_ ” Jesse says with a huff. “Jus’ keep my mind off’a it. Talk to me. Please.”

Hanzo lowers himself into the seat beside him. Satya’s cool hands touch McCree’s thigh and that’s the only warning he gets before she pulls a piece of shrapnel from his leg. Jesse grunts sharply as he thumps a fist into the meat of his thigh. Hanzo quickly takes a hold of his fist to keep him from doing himself a injury, cupping his hand between his. “What would you like me to talk about?” he asks.

Jesse ain’t exactly got the wherewithal to think of conversation topics at that moment and is about to grit out that he really doesn’t care, when Karma beats him to it. “Tell us about your dragons?”

Hanzo blinks at Jesse’s dæmon than at him. McCree can only offer him a shrug, wincing as Satya pulls another piece of metal from him. “Very well,” Hanzo says slowly. “They are not dæmons. They started that way though, centuries ago. My ancestors possessed dragon dæmons, as rare then as it is now, and this allowed the Shimada to obtain power within Hanamura. They used this power to seek ways of extending their influence — beyond the castle walls and through the centuries. Their dæmons were eventually able to live beyond them, bound to their bloodline when their bodies perished.”

“Where are they now?” Jesse asks. “They’re awful big to be hiding inside yer clothes.”

Hanzo snorts as he pushes up the tattered sleeve of his _gi_. Jesse is familiar with his tattoo, the indigo scales and gold lightning that curl around Hanzo’s shoulder to the delicate bones of his wrist, but he’s never been close enough to touch before. Jesse reaches out and is distantly surprised the skin is smooth and warm beneath his fingers — he pulls away when he realises what he’s doing, glancing up at Hanzo. “Sorry. Y’mean they’re—?”

Hanzo nods sharply, lips pressed in a thin line. “Huh,” both him and Karma say. Jesse’s dæmon leans forward and sniffs Hanzo’s tattoo, so close that his whiskers almost brush against him. It makes McCree itch and he has to nudge him back with a boot before he can relax again.

“Be still,” Satya says before stabbing him with the tweezers again.

“ _Hijueputa_ , y’could try to be gentle.” Jesse wishes he had a cigarillo but Angela will have his hide if he smokes in the Orca, even with the door open and blowing in hot desert air. They oughta be back soon, her and the other team, and Jesse’s just hoping they found something at the Omnium to make this whole trip worth it.

McCree takes a deep breath, holding it in his lungs until they ache before letting it out slowly. “Keep talkin’, darlin’. When’d ya get the tattoo?”

“Y’weren’t born with it, were ya?” Karma asks, making Hanzo laugh.

“No, I got the tattoo once I was Settled. It was done over three long sessions and I was very proud but also very glad when they were finished. Genji was so jealous that he cried and demanded he get his tattoo as well. I always believed that was why he Settled as young as he did.”

Hanzo’s face shutters suddenly, the light in his eyes dulling. McCree curses himself for bringing it up, for always wrong-footing him, for killing that pleased little smirk he’d had. It’d be nice if they could talk without McCree putting his foot in it.

Another gust of wind brings a cloud of dirt into the zeppelin. McCree pulls his hand from Hanzo’s to shield his eyes. It’s only because he’s looking at the door that he sees Tracer blinking her way up the ramp before she sticks her head inside. “Hello, luvs!” she says before she gets a good look at them all. “Oi, Angie! Got some walking wounded in here that’d appreciate your healing touch.”

The others aren’t far behind Tracer, a little sunburnt but otherwise unscathed. Angela takes in his injuries, Satya’s bloodied gloves and tray of recovered shrapnel pieces, and clicks her tongue. “You could not stay out of trouble for a single mission, Jesse?”

“You know me, Ange,” Jesse says, giving her a tired wink and smirk. “Trouble has a way of findin’ me.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” Her dæmon jumps from her Caduceus staff and begins to fuss over Karma, the flying squirrel dæmon petting over the bloody bite marks where the irradiated rat dæmon had sunk its gnarled fangs into him. Karma huffs but bears it admirably. “You will need to stay in the medbay when we return. I need to be sure there is no shrapnel remaining before I can stitch your injuries closed.”

“You got it, doc,” Jesse says. He wheezes when Satya pulls a particularly nasty piece from his arm. McCree leans back and tries to breath through it — distantly he can hear Genji and Hanzo murmuring to each other, and Angela checking on Hana. That’s good, her ankle will need to be wrapped up for the trip home. He grunts when he realises he just thought of Watchpoint: Gebraltarik as home but he’s too tired to argue with his own head.

Satya tells him quietly that she has removed all she can and Jesse can only just about bring himself to hum an answer and keep as still as she can while she bandages him up to keep from bleeding out. McCree’s relieved when he hears her leave with the tray of bloodied shrapnel. The Orca’s engines start to rumble and the whole zeppelin lurches sickeningly as they take off. Jesse cracks open an eye to squint at Hanzo. “Y’got somewhere to be?”

Hanzo takes too long to answer to be anything like as casual as he tries to sound. “No. I will stay here.”

Jesse almost tells him to leave — he doesn’t need a nurse, he ain’t dying. The words ring hollow in his head, however, and he closes his eye again. “Alright then. I’m getting some shut-eye. Karma, keep an eye out.” McCree pulls his hat down over his face and settles further into his seat, and lets the rocking of the zeppelin send him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the book series, a person dies when their dæmon dies and vice versa, always. i figured that with more advanced tech, that might change. this world is a little more old-fashioned, hence telegraph instead of radio, zeppelin instead of transport, etc., but the technology is roughly equal to canon.
> 
> when jesse mentions jumping the border to texas, he isn't talking about state lines. texas is a seperate country in this au and i imagine austin is like a smaller numbani with equal omnic rights.


	5. The Marionette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obedience, Submission, Grace.

They have been in the air for five minutes at most when McCree’s dæmon grunts and shifts where he lies across Jesse’s boots. “Don’t suppose I could ask ya a favour?” he asks, blinking up at Hanzo with drooping eyes.

“Ah,” Hanzo says, thrown for a moment. “Yes, of course.”

“Could ya keep watch? Don’t think I can keep my eyes open much longer.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Hanzo says quickly. The wolfdog dæmon blinks very slowly as he grins at Hanzo, blood still in his teeth and Stormbow clasped between his paws. He should have offered sooner, the moment McCree leant back and immediately started snoring. “Rest, Karma.”

Karma snorts. “That ain’t my name,” he says, tongue lolling out his mouth. “S’just what Jes calls me. My real name is Chamaenerion.”

“Rest then, Chamaenerion.”

“Thanks, honey,” the dæmon says as he places his head back down on Jesse’s boots. “Yer a doll.”

Hanzo is powerless to stop from smiling at the softly snoring pair beside him, the surge of affection he feels for them unthinkable even a short few weeks ago. McCree is still as strange as he’d seemed that night in Paris; if anything he is even more bewilderingly kind now that they are friends. A part of Hanzo still revolts at the thought but there is no denying it, even if he’d wanted to. Any doubts about their relationship would have blown away like smoke in a hurricane when his dragons passed through McCree and left him alive.

Genji takes the seat next to Hanzo, sighing as he settles in. “This was a waste of time,” he says quietly. Hanzo shoots him a glare but Jesse and Chamaenerion sleep on. “Don’t give me that look, those two could sleep through a firefight.”

Hanzo glances around the Orca. Hana has her injured ankle propped up on a seat and is scowling fiercely at her gaming device while Lúcio tries and fails to keep a conversation going. Satya and Doctor Ziegler speak quietly to each other, Zenyatta and Bastion charge in the corner, Tracer and Torbjörn pilot the zeppelin. Only Reinhardt takes notice of him and smiles tiredly, even giving him a little wave as his lion dæmon gives him a slow nod. Hanzo can only blink back in confusion.

He can also feel Genji’s eyes on him the whole time, heavy with his thoughts. “If you have something to say, speak,” Hanzo grits out after bearing it for another minute.

“You deserve nice things, brother.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hanzo says, and even he knows he sounds mulish. He resolutely does not look at Genji or McCree, instead choosing to watch as Australia disappears into the Indian Ocean through the window.

“Ignorance does not suit you,” Genji says evenly.

Hanzo huffs but manages to bite back his immediate retort. “We have spoken about this.”

“We have but you haven’t listened so we’ll keep rehashing this conversation until you do,” Genji says with a familiar stubbornness. Hanzo can’t help but roll his eyes. “You haven’t listened. If you had she would be here.”

“Don’t,” Hanzo snaps. He knows the others are looking at them — the Shimada brothers, arguing again — but Hanzo only looks to McCree. His dæmon twitches and sighs but does not wake. Jesse’s breathing doesn’t so much as falter, deep and slow and even. There’s a bruise at his temple mottling his brown, freckled skin, and Hanzo wonders if this will become another story, another close call the cowboy miraculously survived.

“You are the only thing standing in your way to being happy,” Genji says more softly. “It’s also not fair to McCree.”

Hanzo turns back to his brother. “What does Jesse have to do with anything?”

Genji gives him a long look, and there are few moments Hanzo hates his faceplate more than when he is forced to guess what his brother is thinking beneath it. “He is your friend?” Genji asks. Hanzo can only nod. “Just a friend?”

Hanzo is already opening his mouth to bite back — until he remembers how he’d let fly his dragons directly at Jesse, and how his heart had leapt into his throat with a desperate terror that had him running down into the canyon before they had yet to disappear. He knows what it meant that they only left Jesse with a face like awe but unhurt, and so does Genji. Hanzo’s tattoo still tingles and he rubs absently at it, feels the dragons roiling just beneath his skin.

Everywhere he touched Chamaenerion feels as if it’s sparking still, like an invisible Lichtenberg figure, leaving Hanzo indelibly marked in a way only he and McCree would ever know. Somehow Hanzo had been unprepared for the intimacy of breaking the greatest taboo and now he doubts he could ever forget.

Hanzo closes his mouth and goes back to stubbornly staring out the window. Genji sighs and is preparing to lecture his brother again when Satya walks over to them. “We have informed Winston of the failure of our mission,” she says.

“Bad intel,” Genji says with a shrug. “It happens.”

Satya holds out her phone and after a moment Hanzo takes it. The screen contains only a few things; coordinates, a satellite photogram of what Hanzo assumes is the destroyed Omnium, and a stylised purple skull. “Do you recognise this logo?” Satya asks, pointing at the skull.

“No,” Hanzo says. Genji shakes his head.

“This is not the only time they have messaged us.” Satya swipes to another message. Coordinates and the purple skull; instead of the satellite photogram, the Overwatch symbol. “I received this two days after I left Vishkar. Hana and Lúcio received identical messages.”

“They must be trying to help us then, this skull person,” Genji says.

Satya hums as she takes back her phone. “Perhaps. Regardless, they are aware of our nascent organisation when we are still supposedly covert and illegal. The UN could become the very least of our troubles.”

Genji dismisses her concern as soon as she walks back to Doctor Ziegler, making some flippant remark about who could be worse than the UN. Hanzo hums and rubs at his tattoo but his dragons refuse to be soothed. He looks to McCree and the bruise at his temple, and thinks of Paris.

Doctor Ziegler is quick to herd the injured people to her medbay once they arrive back at the Watchpoint. Jesse ambles out of the zeppelin behind Hana after taking a moment to stretch out the kinks in his back; Hanzo would hesitate to say he was injured at all if not for the slightest hitch in his step and how long it takes Chamaenerion to heave himself to his paws. Angela is not fooled by his pretence at all if her narrow eyes is anything to go by.

The debrief is short, thankfully. Winston shows them the message again and there is a fierce debate whether they should heed the next message should another be sent. Brigitte and Reinhardt distrust a man who does not show his face, Satya and Tracer question his motives. Strangely, it is Torbjörn who supports Winston’s decision to send them to Australia. “Not like we have much intel to go on,” he grunts while his dæmon irritably snaps her claws.

Hanzo does not care what Overwatch decides to do; he cares very little at the moment for anything save how McCree is doing in the medbay. He does not head to him immediately however, all too aware of Genji’s knowing eyes on him as he leaves the briefing room. Hanzo decides he rather desperately needs a shower and a change of clothes — Stormbow is placed on his bed with a great deal more care than he gives his ruined _kyudo-gi_ as he slings it into the trash. Hanzo spends the next twenty minutes scrubbing the dust from his hair and emerges feeling more human, but as he tugs on a standard issue shirt and ties his hair back he is at a loss for what to do next.

Tea could help, potentially, but Hanzo has the strong suspicion the kitchen will be occupied. The rec room also, and the training range. What Hanzo truly wants is quiet to sort through his thoughts; unfortunately, the person who best helps with that is also the source of his troubled thoughts.

Hanzo sighs as he succumbs to the inevitable and makes his way to the medbay. He has to steel his nerves before he can walk in, and think of an excuse that isn’t hopelessly transparent. Behind the doors he can hear McCree talking, which doesn’t help, as well as Lúcio and Winston, together with something scraping. Hanzo enters the medbay in time to see Lúcio positioning a large speaker so that it is aimed directly at Jesse, with Winston adjusting another at the foot of his bed and effectively boxing him in. “What is this?” Hanzo says louder than he meant to.

They all jump, and Lúcio and Winston turn to him with wide eyes, but McCree quickly grins as though he isn’t sat on a medbay bed covered in bandages. His dæmon looks less than pleased, curled up in Jesse’s lap with his long legs hanging off the bed and Jesse’s hands buried in his fur. “Jus’ a little philosophy experiment, darlin’, nothin’ to worry about.”

“A _science_ experiment,” Winston stresses. Jesse rolls his eyes at what must not be the first reminder.

“You are doing this to yourself?” Hanzo scowls at the speakers to keep from staring at McCree’s bare chest and thick arms, even wrapped up in bandages as he is. “Your idea?” he says to Lúcio who looks like he regrets being in the room.

“Y-yeah, man.” He launches into a long and highly detailed explanation. Hanzo crosses his arms and nods at points, but he has never heard of ‘audio-medicine’ before and Lúcio quickly loses him. As near as Hanzo can understand, Lúcio has with Winston’s help created music that will sync with dæmons using vibrations with the aim that it will accelerate healing, unlike biotic emitters which funnel Dust.

“See? Perfectly safe,” Jesse says once Lúcio has finished his explanation and has gone back to tinkering with the position of his amplifiers, probably to avoid being caught between Hanzo and the thick-headed fool in the medbay bed. The muttered conversation between him and Winston does not inspire Hanzo with confidence.

McCree’s hat is on his bedside table, Hanzo notices, still in reach. Jesse looks strangely vulnerable without it, and the dragon’s rumble their displeasure. Hanzo has to fight to keep them back, rubbing at his tattoo. “This is foolhardy even for you,” he says sharply. “Allowing yourself to be used like a common lab rat. You do not know what this will do to you.”

“It’s just a bit’a music!” Jesse says. “Uh, no offense, gentlemen. Look, most likely thing that’ll happen is nothing, and it’s not like they could use an actual lab rat. They need someone with a dæmon so here I am, doing my bit for philosophy. And science.”

Hanzo gives him a sour look. “And if it _does_ do something?”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m already in the medbay.” Jesse’s casual shrug is inordinately infuriating but Hanzo cannot argue. “Hey Lúcio, maybe after you’ve made me yer guinea pig we could use these to throw a party. Bet we could shake the Watchpoint off its foundations.”

Winston throws him a deeply unimpressed look while Lúcio tries and fails to look half as stern. “These are highly specialised pieces of medical equipment. You want a party, I got amps in my room that could get the whole peninsula bumpin’.” He wheels over an instrument stand and snaps on a pair of blue cauchuc gloves, making Chamaenerion jump. “Last chance if you wanna duck out, McCree.”

“Don’t say that,” his dæmon grumbles. A bite wound over his eye has swollen to the size of a grape though the blood is at least gone from his fur.

McCree holds out his hand. “Hanzo’ll tell ya, I don’t back down on account’a little blood.”

“Alright,” Lúcio says and swipes an alcohol swab down Jesse’s palm before he picks up a scalpel. Lúcio cuts a very shallow line across his palm, hardly deep enough to bleed, but Jesse still winces like it is the greatest harm he’s come to that day. Lúcio’s dæmon hops down from his shoulder and across the bed to the other amplifier as Lúcio pulls out his phone. “Ready?”

Winston nods. “On your mark.”

Lúcio turns on his speakers and the noise they pump out could generously be called music. There’s a moment where nothing happens — then Chamaenerion begins to bristle as a deep bass growl thunders through his chest and his muzzle wrinkles in a vicious snarl.

“Oh no,” Winston says.

“Turn it off!” Hanzo barks as he reaches for McCree.

“Don’t!” Jesse says sharply. He pulls his dæmon to his chest — he looks pale, his own pupils huge and dark, but he still looks up at Hanzo with a stubborn scowl. “I ain’t hurt.” Chamaenerion is completely stiff, his fur standing on end as foam starts to drip from his teeth. He barely resembles a dæmon anymore. “I ain’t hurt!” Jesse insists even as the last bit of colour drains from his face.

Showing the better part of valour, Lúcio wordlessly turns off his amplifiers. The quiet left in the space of the music seems bigger than the noise itself as McCree slumps back into the bed with a groan that turns into a wheeze as his dæmon collapses on top of him and seems to promptly pass out. There’s nothing Hanzo can do except stand there while Winston takes Jesse’s pulse and Lúcio shines a light in his eyes. When McCree lifts his palm, the cut has already healed over, leaving behind only a thin white scar.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” McCree says, smiling weakly. “Looks like yer on to somethin’ after all.”

“I— uh—” Lúcio says as he takes a step back from Jesse’s bedside. “I’m gonna go see how Hana’s doing. Lemme, uh, know if you guys need me. I’ll be—” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder to the bed on the other side of the medbay, hidden behind closed curtains. Lúcio’s dæmon hops over the bed and into his arms, croaking anxiously. Winston isn’t even attempting to look like he isn’t running away as he disappears into the back office.

Hanzo nods though he doesn’t take his eyes from Jesse. The look he’s getting from the cowboy can only be described as _ornery._ “What were ya doing, tellin’ Lúcio to turn it off?” McCree asks without preamble as soon as the others are gone. “Weren’t hurtin’ me.”

“Stubborn _fool_ ,” Hanzo spits. “You will kill yourself one day, McCree.”

“N’ maybe I will. Still ain’t yer call to make.” Jesse settles a hand on his dæmon’s side, watching it rise and fall with Chamaenerion’s breathing.

“Why though?” Hanzo asks after a long moment. He tries to hold on to his anger but it slips from his grasp like sand as he drops into the plastic chair at McCree’s bedside.

McCree must see something on his face because his own softens. He shrugs with a small self-effacing smile. “Someone had to help, might as well be me.” Hanzo shakes his head and Jesse gives him a long, accessing look. His eyes very obviously catch on Hanzo’s standard issue shirt and Hanzo refuses to fold his arms to hide or get embarrassed — it is different from his usual choice of attire but he does not have so many clothes that he can easily replace the _gi_ he ruined. Jesse doesn’t say anything, thankfully. ”Why’d you come down here again?”

“I was concerned for you.”

McCree looks utterly disarmed by his honesty, though Hanzo can’t say why. “Damn, darlin’, ya don’t gotta—” he lets out a small huff and dips his head to rub at the back of his neck. At this angle the bruise on his face is starkly visible, having darkened on the journey back to the Watchpoint to a violent purple in the vague shape of the gun’s muzzle.

“I also came to apologise,” Hanzo says haltingly. Jesse tips his head in silent question. “In Australia, I... I was not careful enough. I should not have put your life at risk as I did.” He rubs at his arm and grits his teeth as the dragons fight to break loose. “The dragons sustain themselves on the bond between a person and dæmon, the Dust that binds them, and they do not leave their enemies alive. When I saw— I reacted without thinking and I did not know the dragons would not harm you. I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

“Gave me a helluva shock,” Jesse says with a lopsided grin. Hanzo does not smile back and his attitude sobers once more. “Why didn’t they?”

“They do not hurt allies,” Hanzo says eventually, settling for a half-truth.

“Handy,” Jesse says with a nod. “Ya made the right call.”

“I should not have done it.” Hanzo takes a deep breath but it comes whistling out from between his teeth. He looks away as he feels his hands start to shake. “I shouldn’t have— I did not think—”

“Hey,” Jesse says, and then more sharply when Hanzo doesn’t look at him. “ _Hey._ It was the right call, Hanzo. That fight was turning ugly and ya stopped it before anyone got killed.”

Hanzo ducks his head, scratching hard at his tattoo. “I should not presume to tell you what to do with your dæmon,” he says in a quick, low voice. “Not after what I did.”

“C’mon, it’s OK.” Jesse puts a hand on Hanzo’s wrist and gently pulls him away from where he’s scratching himself raw. The dragons’ battle to release themselves almost reaches the tipping point; his fingertips trail wisps of blue light and Hanzo’s tattoo writhes beneath the surface of his skin. Jesse’s eyes widen comically, if Hanzo felt at all like laughing. “ _Woah._ ”

Hanzo hisses as he claps a hand to his arm and wills the dragons away.

“You OK there?”

“I am fine,” Hanzo says through gritted teeth.

McCree looks at him with sharp eyes and reaches for him again. He lays his palm against the tattoo, his gun calluses catching on Hanzo’s skin. This time it is Hanzo that is surprised as the dragons immediately begin to settle. They wind around each other, purring like housecats as they bump their snouts affectionately into Jesse’s hand, but they stop trying to escape. “Think yer scaly friends might have been worried too?” Jesse asks with another crooked smile.

“I do not know. They do not speak to me,” Hanzo says in wonder. Jesse makes a small noise of surprise and Hanzo looks up to see him blinking in surprise. “They were dæmons but centuries ago. They have had many masters since then — perhaps they spoke to the others but never with me.” Hanzo stiffens as he prepares for any number of comments from Jesse. He knows how wrong, how _unnatural_ his dragons must seem.

McCree only frowns at his own hand still pressed to Hanzo’s arm. “Ain’t that— that’s gotta be hard, sharing yourself with something that won’t even talk to ya.” If he notices Hanzo’s sudden stillness, he makes no sign.

“This was not done to them or me because it was _easy_.” Hanzo looks away, swallowing thickly. “The clan wanted heirs and weapons, and their methods were neither painless nor kind. I had to endure much and watch my brother do the same. Training, tests... Experiments. “

He cannot recall ever telling another person what was done to make him the perfect heir — he certainly cannot recall ever wanting to. And yet now he does and to a ridiculous cowboy. Jesse McCree has thwarted Hanzo’s expectations with unwavering kindness even when he has done nothing to deserve it.

“Hanzo—”

“You were right. It is not my place to tell you what you should do with your dæmon. Please forgive me.”

“If I say I forgive ya, will ya stop beating yerself up over it?” Jesse asks, brows drawn low over a stern expression. Hanzo breathes out a laugh and is about to say something when McCree lets out a jaw-cracking yawn that looks like it surprises him as much as Hanzo. “We’ll get through a conversation one of these days without me fallin’ asleep on you, darlin’.” Despite sleeping most of the flight back from Australia, Jesse is pale and his limp hair sticks to his forehead, though he looks nothing but chagrined at his own exhaustion.

“You should rest.”

“Yer starting to sound like Angie,” Jesse gripes even as he settles back against the medbay bed. Hanzo knows they cannot be comfortable but the moment he lies back McCree’s eyes grow heavy and he looks moments away from passing out. “Hey, when I get out of here, you wanna go into town? Thinkin’ I owe you a drink after you saved my ass.” He blinks slowly and wraps his arms around his dæmon. Hanzo’s arm quickly goes cold. “You and yer dragons. Three drinks, or a drink and maybe somethin’ to eat. Yer call, sweetheart.”

“Rest. It’s been a long day.”

Jesse snorts quietly but he slips into sleep so easily he must have been teetering on the edge. Hanzo sits at his bedside watching him — until he realises how creepy he must seem and tears his eyes away to look at the rest of the medbay.

Hanzo is no expert but the medbay looks well-maintained and clean, even if the holoscreens are small and the machines a little outdated. There’s an office in the back he assumes is where Doctor Ziegler and Winston are; Lúcio reappears from behind the curtains of the far bed and gives Hanzo two thumbs up as he heads for the back room. Hanzo can only respond with a nod, too taken aback and unused to having Lúcio’s sunny smile directed at him to do more.

Hanzo tries to tell himself he should leave; McCree did not ask him to stay and he is not dying. He stands and his dragons retaliate by making his entire arm tingle and go numb. Hanzo rubs at his arm as he shuffles to the medbay door but he hears a quiet sound, like sniffling, from the far end of the medbay. He should leave, it has nothing to do with him, Hanzo is possibly the last person Hana would want to see right now-

Hanzo makes his way over before he can convince himself not to. He’ll peer through the curtains, if she’s fine she’ll never have to know he was there.

Hana is curled up on the medbay bed, cradling her dæmon as she keeps her crying as quiet as possible. Except that cannot be her dæmon — the creature curled around her is a cat. Hanzo must make a noise in his surprise as the dæmon jerks around to look at him and lets out a soft meow. He turns into a pine marten and then into a familiar rabbit before burying his face in Hana’s hair.

This was a mistake, he shouldn’t have come over-

“ _Wait!_ ”

Hanzo hesitates, his hand still on the curtain. Hana is reaching for him with a desperate look on her face. “Please don’t tell anyone?” Her face twists with some emotion and she drops her hand into her lap. “Y’know, not that it matters since everyone already thinks I’m some dumb kid. What’s an Unsettled dæmon gonna hurt?”

“I will not tell anyone.”

“Thanks.”

Hanzo nods stiffly. Hana does not tell him to go so he’s stands awkwardly at the end of her bed and inspects the pattern on the curtains. “Is Jesse OK?” Hana asks quietly. “I looked when there was all that yelling and Karma looked—”

“Fucked up—” her dæmon Jujak supplies.

“—Yeah. And, you know, Lúcio said he’d be alright but I wanna get that second opinion.” Hana sniffles but looks up at Hanzo with her jaw set in a stubborn line. “C’mon, hit me with your best shot. I’m not gonna cry again or anything.”

“He will be fine,” Hanzo says. She deflates almost immediately, her dæmon sprawling in her lap with a relieved sigh. Hanzo looks at the curtains again as he fingers at the hem of his shirt, picking at the stitches. “He also does not think you are stupid.”

“Where the hell’d you get that impression?” Hana shoots back. “You heard what he said! It was a stupid stunt, and foolish, and—”

“He did,” Hanzo says evenly. “I will not pretend that he did not. But that is between the two of you. I am only saying that he will probably apologise. I am certain he will once he realises he has hurt you.” He gives the curtains a small, wry smile. “I am told that people can yell at those they care about when it is important enough, when they are scared, and come to regret it later.”

Hana snorts but kindly does not mention that most of the base have heard Hanzo and Genji screaming their lungs out at each other. He is not proud of it but perhaps it was necessary, for both of them; fifteen years after he attempted to murder his brother they had many things they needed to say to each other. Important things, though often unkind in thought and expression.

“Alright. Thanks, I guess.” Hana squints at him. “Why are you being so nice to me? I’ve been nothing but mean to you since I got here, aren’t you mad at me?”

“No,” Hanzo says immediately. He hadn’t been oblivious to the deeply unfriendly way she and the others in Overwatch had been treating him. It just hadn’t occurred to him to be angry about it. Hana is still squinting at him though, like she expects Hanzo to reconsider, and he cannot think of what to say to convince her otherwise. He blurts out the first thing he can think of instead. “We should train together.”

“What?”

“You trained with your MEKA unit?” Hanzo asks. Hana nods as she shifts around to give Hanzo her full attention. “You fought with a unit that was similarly armoured, against omnics that could formulate a counter-strategy if given time. Charging in was prudent because time was of the essence.”

“Yeah,” Hana says, her eyes lighting up. “Yeah! I’m totally picking up what you’re putting down!”

“My brother and I train together often so we know how the other moves, how they respond to attacks—”

“So if I train with you, I can learn all your strats!” Hana held up her hand for a high five and Hanzo only paused for a second before doing the same. Hana slaps their hands together and whoops. “We totally need to plan a training sesh for when my ankles fixed so I can up my game for next time.” Her expression falters. “Do you... think there’ll be a next time? For me, anyway?”

“Yes,” Hanzo says, putting as much conviction into the word as he can. “You are talented. Overwatch needs more people like you.”

“You know it,” Hana says with a smirk, shooting finger guns at him.

Hanzo snorts but he smirks back. “You should get some rest as well.”

“Sure, sure.” She scoots back in the bed and gets comfy. “Good talk, GG, I’ll see you when Mercy lets me out.”

“I look forward to it.” Hanzo’s surprised by how much he means it. He leaves Hana’s bedside with an incredulous smile that softens as he passes McCree’s bed where the man slumbers, wrapped around his dæmon. He might have spent a while lingering on the soft fan of Jesse’s eyelashes against his cheeks and the dusting of freckles across strong shoulders, if Hanzo had not heard Hana snickering. He scuttles out of the medbay quickly after that.

On the way back to his room he thinks he sees golden fur and green eyes, but when Hanzo turns to look she’s already gone. Anger briefly flares in his gut but it dies just as suddenly — he’s too tired to be angry at old ghosts right now. He turns away and continues down the corridor. Let his dæmon do as she pleases, and Hanzo will do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿  
> so! if you don't care in the least about flower meanings, u can skip these notes.
> 
>  _Chamaenerion angustifolium_ , commonly known in North America as fireweed, in some parts of Canada as great willowherb, and in Britain as rosebay willowherb. it grows well in 'disturbed ground', which is an understatement — it was nicknamed bombweed because of its habit of growing in the craters left by bombs in the second world war. it's used to help areas recover after forest fires and even after oil spills. it's also a good source of vitamin c but it's pretty bitter.
> 
> so: thriving in adversity, even going looking for trouble. the vanguard, with a nurturing nature though perhaps not a gentle one. pretty fitting for jesse mccree.
> 
> (fireweed also means chastity in the language of flowers, which is _hilarious_.)


	6. The Griffin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Treasure, Watchfulness, Courage.

Karma wakes up 18 hours later with a head full of wool and a mouth of cotton. It takes a lot for Jesse not to haul them both to his room to recover, away from where anyone might see them. Hana’s out of the medbay as soon as, after she draws the line when Angie starts lecturing her about taking more care whilst in the field. “I’m fine, _Mom_. You’re acting like I’ve never broken anything before,” Hana says loudly as she heaves herself out of the bed and on to a pair of crutches.

Angela’s face twists in an interesting mix of disappointment and horror. “I am not your mother!” she eventually sputters.

“Well, _duh_ ,” Hana says while pulling her brattiest look, screwing up her face and sticking out her tongue.

Lúcio snickers. “Of course not. Doc’s fine with setting bones but don’t ask her to read you a bedtime story. Complete disaster. If there was a World’s Okayest Mum award—“

“She wouldn’t even win, she’d come third, _maybe_.” Hana and Lúcio high-five while giggling like naughty school kids.

Angie tries to give a long-suffering sigh but her dæmon betrays her, laughing loudly. Or as loudly as a such a little dæmon can. She shrugs at Jesse as Lúcio helps Hana limp out of the medbay, as if to say, ‘ _kids. What can you do?’_

Jesse might have left too if he could stand without the world spinnin’. He keeps trying anyway and becomes pretty familiar with the medbay floor as a result. “Damn, Lucio,” he grunts as he’s helped back into his bed for the third time that day. “The hell’d ya put in that thing?”

“Only cutting edge audio-engineering,” Lúcio says cheerily. “Just needs some work to figure out the side effects.”

Karma looks at him with heavy, bloodshot eyes. “I’d be real appreciative, partner,” he rasps, and Jesse can feel it in his own throat. Like silk being dragged over glass shards.

McCree develops a fever while lying in bed waiting for the nausea to subside, the dizziness giving way to a pounding headache set to the beat of his own misery. They’re not sure if it’s because of Lúcio’s music or because of the shrapnel until Lúcio’s changing his bandages and sucks a breath through his teeth. His wounds are red and weeping, and Lúcio can’t seem to stop wincing. “I’ll get the Doc. Sorry, you’re probably gonna have to stay here until this clears up, just in case.”

Angela frowns the whole time she’s setting up his IV line, and Jesse is convinced she stabs him extra hard. “This is because you would not let us remove the cloth fragments from your wounds,” she says sharply. “If you had not been so stubborn and let us cut the clothes from you, you would not be ill now.”

McCree snorts, too tired to think of a clever retort. The painkillers dull the throbbing behind his eyes and he’s moments from passing out, exhausted by the pain. Staying awake takes a lot of strength but Jesse fights off sleep so he can give Angela his best defiant look. “Ain’t likely to start listenin’ anytime soon.”

Angie sighs and smiles sadly at him. “Perhaps. I hope one day you will find someone worth listening to.”

McCree wants to know what the hell she means by that but sleep wins out and he passes out before he can ask. He spends the better part a week in the medbay before he can stumble to his feet and not fall over. Hanzo and Genji visit him sometimes but Jesse doesn’t let them stay — he doesn’t want any of Hanzo’s guilt or Genji’s particular kind’a sympathy. He ain’t dying yet.  

Lena zips in only long enough to sneak him some real food, instead of another goddamn day of Angie’s highly-nutritious, minimally-flavoured paste. She even gets him a chocolatl bar, and McCree’s never been happier to see processed sugar in his life. He’s left alone otherwise, and McCree prefers it that way.

When Jesse is released at the end of that week, he steps out into some strange alternate reality. On his slow way back to his own room, McCree pokes his head into the rec room. Hanzo’s at the table in his usual seat, the same place the pair of them have spent more than a couple of evenings together in silence. Satya’s sat with him though, having dragged McCree’s chair all the way around the table so they can sit with their heads together. They’re talking quietly over a book and neither of them notice him lookin’ in. Karma licks his knuckles and Jesse decides to leave them be. They never even look up.

That ain’t the only incident. After sleeping for twelve hours in his own bed and a short debrief with Winston, he goes down to the shooting range to see if he still remembers how to hold Peacekeeper. Hana’s shooting targets with Hanzo, making him laugh as she shows off with her little peashooter. She scowls when she sees Jesse — he might even deserve that, considering how they left things.

Hanzo’s opening his mouth to say something but McCree beats him to it, tipping his hat at the pair of them with a lopsided smile. “Jus’ passin’ through, partner, don’t mind me.”

Jesse tries not to feel like he’s running away again as the door slides shut behind him, cutting Hanzo off mid-word. “This is what we wanted,” Karma says and looks miserable as he does, ears pinned back against his head and tail low.

McCree runs his flesh hand over his dæmon’s head. “Yeah. S’nice to have been wanted for a li’l bit though.”

He goes to sit on the roof instead, to watch the sea and have his first cigarillo in a week. Ana would have known how to pull him out of his head, and Reyes would have had him runnin’ laps until he forgot how to think. That Overwatch hasn’t existed in a long time and this one still needs his help. So McCree makes himself stand taller, forces a smile on to his face, and goes back to Winston.

Winston gives McCree a strange look but gladly accepts his help sifting through all their intelligence, trying to avoid their next mission being a repeat of Australia. Fareeha’s keeping them in the loop about the movements of a group near Cairo and the vigilante that’s been causing ‘em trouble. Winston’s clearly anglin’ to recruit this Shrike to Overwatch but McCree isn’t sure about them — he’s only known one woman that good with a rifle and Ana’s been dead almost eight years.

There are a couple of mercenaries Winston’s got tabs on. Some are Ex-Overwatch folk that didn’t answer the recall, and a couple of them were Blackwatch. Jesse doesn’t look too closely; he prefers not knowing who survived, so he can keep pretending a couple of the good ones made it.

There are a few rogue agents too. A man calling himself Soldier:76 — he’s got a visor covering his face, no prints on file, and no visible dæmon. The man’s untraceable, despite Athena’s best efforts. McCree hates the sight of him.

He sure as hell doesn’t like the look of this group either — based on the blurry photos Fareeha‘s sent, they’re a part of Talon. It’s a long, boring trawl through all their intel lookin’ for something on Talon and they get not a whole lot for their efforts except backache and eye strain. Winston might be used to the long shifts they pull, and McCree’s never heard Athena complain about anything, but McCree’s body starts to give him hell if he sits still too long. Doesn’t help that Karma gets antsy.

McCree knows he’s using the excuse of all the work he has to do to slink around the base like a long-tailed cat in a saloon full of rocking chairs. He avoids the kitchen when he can and eats quick when he can’t — and if he avoids the rec room in the evening, and the shooting range, then that’s nobody’s damn business.

Days later, Jesse’s out walking off his excess energy. He passes by the little garden that’s sprung up on base under Bastion’s watchful optics, with the idea of getting some fresh air and a cigarillo, and sees the omnic and Hanzo weeding the tiny patch of earth.

Hanzo looks so peaceful, on his knees with dirt on his regulation shirt, unlike himself. He’s got a small smile as he talks lowly to his companion and doesn’t seem to mind that Bastion can only respond in Binary, nor Ganymede hopping across the dirt near him. Jesse’s chest hurts as he’s hit with a sudden wave of longing, though he’ll be damned if he knows longing for _what._ It ain’t like he can miss hangin’ around in silence with a man he hardly knows.

McCree suddenly realises he’s being a creep and staring at Hanzo. He’s about to run away again when he damn near walks into Zenyatta. “Woah there. Sorry,” he says, putting his hands up like he wants to steady him though Zenyatta doesn’t so much as wobble where he hovers.

“All is well, McCree,” Zenyatta says with a wave of his hand. He watches with only a slight tilt of his head as Jesse shuffles out of the doorway and away from where Hanzo might see him

“Well,” Jesse says, scratching at the back of his neck. “Be seein’ ya. Gotta get back to work, y’know how it is.”

He’s already halfway down the corridor when Zenyatta calls out to him. “McCree, may I have a moment of your time?”

“Uh—“

“I promise I will be brief,” Zenyatta says. Jesse huffs but there’s no way he can say no, not when he puts it like that. He gestures to Zenyatta to go on and the omnic bows his head. “I have not seen you around these last few days. Are you well?”

“Naw, just been… busy. Readin’ reports n’ such.” Jesse shrugs. “I’m fine.”

“I am glad to hear it, my friend.” The orbs around Zenyatta’s neck circle and spin around him. “Please remember though that balance is important. As hard as one must work, one must also make time to relax. Your absence has been noticed — your friends miss you.”

Jesse scratches at the back of his neck again as he carefully avoids Zenyatta’s optics. He knows when a conversation is about more than is being said — Jesse wouldn’t have survived Blackwatch otherwise — but he has to wonder if this is how Hanzo feels when he talks to Zenyatta. McCree would love a window to throw himself out of right about now. “I ain’t hiding. They know where to find me if they needed me.”

Zenyatta hums, a burst of static. McCree wonders how many of his mannerisms are truly his, and how many he took on for the sake of his human friends. “Perhaps, if they thought you wished to be found.” McCree narrows his eyes at Zenyatta but his faceplate is as inscrutable as always. “I have taken up enough of your time, however, and I wish you luck with your work.”

McCree tips his hat and doesn’t waste any time fleeing back to Winston’s lab. Karma’s got his ears pinned back, the fur along his spine bristling. “He’s gonna—”

“I know,” Jesse says lowly. He puts it to the back of his mind though, until someone comes knocking on his door that night. He’s tired, and sore — what Jesse would really like to do was pass out for a couple of hours, not make nice with his teammates.

“Suppose we pretend we’re not in?” his dæmon murmurs from where he’s already sprawled out on the bed.

Jesse lets out an irritated grunt as he glares at the door. “Where else’d I be?” he mutters back.

“McCree?” Hanzo calls from the other side of his door. Jesse and Karma both sit up, ears perked. “I wish to speak with you, please.”

“Aw hell—”

“Hanzo?” Jesse says as he strides over to the door and throws it open. Hanzo’s got his fist poised midair, like he’d been about to knock again, and he drops it quickly. Jesse scratches at his chest self-consciously, wishing he’d thought to at least put on a shirt so he wouldn’t have to stand there in just his sleep pants. “Y’needed something?” he asks when Hanzo has been silent a long, awkward moment.

Hanzo glances down at McCree’s bare chest before his eyes snap back to his face. “Yes, I—” He glances away, looking through the open doorway into McCree’s room. “I believe you owe me a drink or two.”

Jesse blinks at him. “I do?”

Hanzo’s starting to go red at the tips of his ears. “You said it was thanks for saving you. If you would prefer though, I could buy you drinks as an apology for—” He gestures with a hand vaguely at his tattooed arm. McCree can’t for the life of him recall saying he owed Hanzo a drink — though come to think of it, he does owe him for saving his hide against those Junkers.

He takes too long to answer and Hanzo’s already stepping away. “I am sorry, this was presumptuous of me—”

“Wait, Hanzo—” Jesse reaches for him, his fingers just grazing his wrist. Hanzo looks down at his hand then up again — there’s something going on beneath the obvious but Jesse can’t see it for his blindspot. “I must’ve been pretty out of it when I said that but I’m not a man to wiggle outta a promise. I can get you some of that sake you like?”

He really wants to, is the thing. Jesse wants to drink with Hanzo and maybe talk a little this time. He tries to hold on to the hope that Hanzo didn’t just put up with him, that he also considers McCree a friend.

Hanzo smiles a little. “You mentioned going into town?” he says almost shyly.

“Y’got a place in mind?” Jesse asks, trying not to grin too excitedly as he leans against the doorframe.

Hanzo shakes his head. “I have not been into town. I… did not want to risk it.”

Jesse could kick himself. Of course Hanzo would avoid a strange town, without another person or a dæmon at his back. Not after Paris. McCree glances back at Karma and share the same thought, so heartfelt they think it at the same time: _I can watch his back_. “Sure, I can show you some places in town,” he says as he turns back to Hanzo. “Could even be nice places.”

“That would be good,” Hanzo says with another shy smile. Jesse can’t look away. “Thank you.”

“No problem, sugar.”

McCree’s threats are empty — he takes Hanzo to one of the nicest bars in town that will still sell alcohol to a scruffy cowboy. They don’t end up drinking all that much, however. Jesse almost forgets that the first few months of their acquaintanceship happened in virtual silence; if quiet was easy with Hanzo, talkin’ with him is like muscle memory. Hanzo is just as dryly funny as Jesse remembers, his dorky laughter just as endearing. He’s disappointed when they leave the bar and head back to the Watchpoint, sure that this is a one time deal and now they’ll go back to their normal, in silence.

Hanzo’s at his door again the next night, asking in as round about a way as possible if Jesse would like to get gelato from that place they walked past on the way to the bar, sometime, together, perhaps. Jesse’s surprised but mostly he’s delighted.

The struggle to keep all his questions to himself is gettin’ to be impossible, however. Every new facet of Hanzo he finds only makes him want to know more. After one question too many Hanzo’s competitive streak makes it a game: a question for a question, and the chance to take a pass if it’s somewhere they can’t or won’t go. It lets Jesse ask his questions, so long as he’s prepared to answer some of Hanzo’s.

“So, Jesse,” Hanzo starts one day, all faux-casual as they walk through town together and enjoy an afternoon off-base, the warmth of the early summer sun. Jesse’s seen the way he’s eyed the gelato bars they’ve gone past but hasn’t figured out an angle yet. “You have mentioned that you knew Doctor Ziegler in the past, in Overwatch.”

“Me and Angie were friends back then. Y’want the story?” Jesse rolls his cigarillo across his teeth as he thinks. “Well, she was — is — some kinda genius. Her folks were just a couple’a shopkeeps from the Swiss Confederation n’ they died in automotive wreck. She was sixteen. Overwatch snapped her up the moment they could, about a month after they recruited me. She was kinda like you back then.” Jesse grins as Hanzo narrows his eyes at him, unsure how to take that.

Angela Ziegler was gorgeous, and the exact sort of girl McCree would have gone for at seventeen. He’d tried too, using the corniest pick-up line he could think of. Angie had been puzzled for several long seconds before burstin’ a gut laughing at him, like she hadn’t laughed in years. Jesse remembers thinking she had a nice laugh for a girl with such sad eyes, and somewhere along the line he’d decided she needed a friend and that he could be that for her.

“We’ve been friends since the early days. I trust her with my life,” Jesse says. Hanzo nods, satisfied with his answer, which is his cue. “The piercing on yer nose.”

“My pierc-?” Hanzo lifts a hand to his face, not quite touching the bridge piercing. “Oh. It was something I had always wanted to do but that the clan would never have allowed. Once I left, I realised I could, so I did.” Hanzo shrugs awkwardly. There’s something indescribably charming about an ex- _yakuza_ realising he has the power to do what he wants, for the first time in his life, and choosing to get a bit of facial jewelry. McCree smothers his smile behind his hand and nods at Hanzo to go.

“Your gun. Is there a story behind why you use such an old-fashioned weapon?”

“Yer bow ain’t so high-tech either, Shimada,” McCree snipes back.

Hanzo smiles, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. “Perhaps there is still a future for anachronisms. Is that a pass?”

“No, it ain’t.” Jesse sighs. “I told ya Santa Fe didn’t have much in the way of modern tech, right? Well, old-fashioned guns were all we had n’ they’re what I learned to shoot with. Give me a fancy pulse rifle and I can still shoot the eye outta a dime from twenty paces, but it just doesn’t feel right.” He shrugs and gives a self-deprecating little smile. “Sentimental, I know.”

“It is, a little,” Hanzo says, his smile still present in the soft look of his eyes. Being laughed at doesn’t sting so much when it’s Hanzo, though that doesn’t stop Jesse acting offended and clutching his chest so that Hanzo snorts. “Is it the same gun you had in Santa Fe?” he asks once McCree’s finished his dramatics.

“Yup,” Jesse says, and can’t help the way he puffs up on pride. “Peacekeeper’s been with me through everythin’.”

“A loyal weapon for a loyal master.” Hanzo looks away, the tips of his ears pinking like he’s getting too much sun again.

Jesse’s about to ask him about his own weapon — he’s got the words sittin’ on his tongue already — when Karma presses his teeth into his knuckles. Jesse looks down at his dæmon then up in the direction he’s lookin’ at. There’s a crowd out today, the better to hide in, and a dozen conversations going on in English and Castilian that’ll mask whatever conversations they have. But Karma’s always had good eyes.

The cat dæmon is laid out on the warm terracotta roof of the house they’re walking past, her green eyes slitted as the sun catches on her fur and turns her the colour of burnished gold. It ain’t the first time Jesse’s seen Genji’s dæmon following them around Gebraltarik, though he’s never seen the man himself — only his dæmon and only at a distance.

Hanzo’s seen her too, he knows. They don’t mention her, though Jesse will catch the defeated slump of Hanzo’s shoulders and the shadows in his eyes that seem to take hours to leave. If his dæmon’s tellin’ him any of what she sees, Genji hasn’t breathed a word of it, so Karma keeps a watch on her while Jesse watches Hanzo.

Any questions about Hanzo’s weapons might stray too close to Genji, and what Hanzo did to him, what was done to both of them. “Ya reckon it’s too early for gelato? Saw a place back there with the green stuff y’like,” he says instead. Hanzo narrows his eyes, like he knows Jesse swerved around the topic, but he lets it go in favour of gelato.

The barest hint of his tattoo peeks out from the sleeve of Hanzo’s jacket when he takes his gelato, the hint of teeth and scales. Sometimes, when McCree’s feelin’ particularly maudlin, he thinks about the questions he can’t ask. Even with the veto, he wouldn’t hurt Hanzo like that — but sometimes, he’ll catch Karma’s eye and they’ll _want_.

It never made much sense to Jesse that Genji had a cat dæmon. People like that tended to be the cool-headed, socially-aware types. Clever in a canny sort of way — lying to a person with a cat by their side was useless, they saw too much and you’d be lucky to know the half of it. Really, Jesse thinks as he enjoys his two scoops of chocolatl and cherry, if either of the Shimada were gonna have a cat dæmon, it’d be _Hanzo—_

McCree damn near drops his gelato. “What the hell,” Karma mutters, looking at him with wide eyes. They’d thought it, and as little sense as it made, it somehow made all the sense in the world. How could he not have realised before now?

“McCree?” Hanzo asks, sounding far away. His hand on Jesse’s shoulder pulls him back a little, and he’s able to take a deep breath again. “Are you alright, Jesse? You look pale.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Jesse says, unconvincingly if Hanzo’s deepening scowl is any indication. “I— Hanzo, if I asked, would you tell me?”

“About what? Jesse—”

“Your dæmon.” Hanzo looks like he’s been sucker-punched before his face crumples into resignation. It’s the only answer Jesse needs. “I’ll be damned,” he says, and then again even quieter in utter astonishment. It’s impossible, it _can’t_ be possible, and McCree can’t even think how to ask any of the questions that have set up a low buzzing in his head.

They’re stood in the middle of a busy street in Gebraltarik. The sun is high in the sky, and tourists and locals alike are milling around them, completely oblivious to the seismic shift that has just happened in Jesse’s world. It takes a long minute for the world to come back into focus but slowly, slowly, it does.

Hanzo keeps looking at him with a face like his heart is breaking. Jesse realises he’s waiting for something from him. “Hanzo, I—“

He flinches away from McCree, who takes an unthinking step after him. He doesn’t know if Hanzo’s about to fight or flee, until he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his transceiver. “Shimada here,” he says as he flicks it on.

“Hanzo, you’re needed back on base,” Winston says hurriedly.

Jesse and Hanzo lock eyes and both move towards somewhere quieter to have this discussion. Overwatch was something of an open secret but this was probably not a talk they wanted an audience for. “What is the situation?” Hanzo asks curtly as they cut through Gebraltarik’s back alleys back towards the Watchpoint.

“McCree and I have been monitoring Talon activities in Egypt and as of thirty minutes ago we had news from Fareeha Amari that a large force was mobilising towards the Necropolis. We think Shrike and Soldier:76 are their targets.”

McCree fumbles for his on transceiver, cursing when he smears melting gelato all over his jeans. He throws the cone to the ground and digs out his transceiver, flicking it on. “We can be back in three minutes max,” he says.

“Ah, um,” Winston stutters.

Jesse quirks an eyebrow at his transceiver. “I know everythin’ we got on Talon and Cairo, I’m the best man we got to be headin’ up the team.”

“There are— with the bounty on Shrike, there are bounty hunters already in Cairo, and given the figure on your head it would be, ah, imprudent to send you. With the team.”

“Listen here, Winston—“

“60 million dollars, Agent McCree,” Winston says in a sharp voice he doesn’t use very often. Jesse winces as Hanzo damn near trips over his own feet, cursing in surprise. He might have forgot to mention that bounty of his and now it’d come round to bite him in the ass. “Hanzo will be going, along with Tracer, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, Brigitte, and Mercy.”

“Since when is Brigitte active duty?” McCree asks loudly.

“She has— she’s created power armour like Reinhardt’s. I didn’t ask the details, she just showed up in it—”

“Wheels up in 5 minutes, Agent Hanzo,” Athena says, cutting through Winston’s rambling.

“... I gotcha, boss,” Jesse says quietly, flicking off his transceiver and returning it to his pocket. Ahead of him, Hanzo’s stopped and is probably lookin’ at him. McCree should probably meet his eye and say something, wish him luck in the very least, but his courage fails and he watches his gelato melt into the cracks in the pavement instead.

“Jesse.” Hanzo’s voice is so soft, almost afraid. Jesse looks up. He’s become a lot less inscrutable to Jesse as they’ve become closer, but there’s a look in Hanzo’s eyes right now that Jesse can’t or won’t understand. “ _Tsuki ga kirei desu ne_.”

That’s all he gives Jesse — a single cryptic bit of Nipponese — before Hanzo turns and runs. At his side, Karma lets out a small whine, his eyes up towards a sun-soaked rooftop. The cat dæmon — _Hanzo’s dæmon_ — is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a person's dæmon stops being able to change its shape at puberty, 'settling' into one form that reflects the person's personality :3 those with cat dæmons are independent and slow to trust, but can also be expressive, intuitive and charming.


	7. The Helmet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War, Protection, Narrow vision.

"Genji," McCree says when he finds him in the kitchen. He's holding a cup of green tea — Jesse's never seen him drink any but he ain't a man to scorn another's comforts.

Genji nods to the seat across from him at the table and Jesse sits. He knows what he wants to ask but not quite how so they sit in silence as he turns it over slowly in his head. "I gotta hypothetical for ya."

"Is this a potential situation or a question?" Genji asks.

Jesse makes a so-so gesture. "Li’l of column 'a', li’l of column 'b'. Suppose a man could increase the distance he could put between himself and his dæmon."

Genji's fingers flex around his cup but he doesn’t say anything. It’s a game every child plays at some point, testing the limits of the bond that keeps them and their dæmon tied together. Karma could get about 80 feet away if he‘s stubborn and trying to prove a point. Any further and Jesse feels like he’s being torn in two.

“Always figured it for a myth before I joined Blackwatch,” Jesse continues with a self-deprecating smile. “Too fantastic to be true ‘til I saw it with my own eyes, like holoscreens. But suppose a man could — a whole continent's worth of distance — and then he did somethin’." He pauses, suddenly unsure. Karma presses in against his leg and he buries his hand in his dæmon's fur. "Something so bad he couldn't stand the sight of himself—"

"Jesse," Genji says. It's not sharp but there's a definite finality to it. "Ask what you mean. No more hypotheticals.”

Jesse looks at his friend, really looks at him. Genji tilts his head as he stares back, his faceplate impassive as always. McCree’s a sharpshooter but he likes to know what he’s aiming at. He’s wading out into unknown waters here and _Gods_ , if he’s _wrong_ —

"Ask," Genji asks again.

"What was your dæmon called?"

Genji turns away. The moment hangs between them, heavy with ghosts, before Genji sighs with a burst of static. He reaches up and removes his faceplate — it's been a good many years since they saw eye-to-eye. Jesse's struck by how sad he looks. The scars ain't nothing new, but Genji back then hadn't spent a lot of time feeling sad or letting anybody see it. "Her name was Yutara," Genji says softly. "And she was a sparrow."

"Guess I was right then," Jesse says without a bit of satisfaction. "Anybody else know, or guessed?"

"Angela knows, and my master," Genji says. "Nobody else. Please, for my brother—"

"I won't tell anybody." Jesse scrubs a hand through his hair. The truth’s only left him with more questions and he wishes suddenly, achingly, that he could talk this out with Hanzo. Hanzo’s in Egypt though, and it ain’t nobody’s fault but his own that McCree isn’t there watching his back. "This does explain an awful lot about the man though.” He presses a hand to his eyes. “Bloody Hellfire, that’s not what I wanted to say first thing.”

Genji snickers. McCree cracks a small smile, peeking through his fingers at one of his oldest friends. “Explains why you looked like you wanted to skin her every time ya saw her back then too. Always thought it was weird to look that way at yer own dæmon."

"I thought she had followed me to glory in what had happened — and then she was a cruel reminder of it." Genji looks down into his cup, turning it slowly and watching the tea gently ripple. "I did not think about what her absence would do to my brother — I did not want to. It was not until I met my master that I began to see her presence for what it truly was.”

“What’s that then? ‘Cause I can’t make sense of it myself.” McCree thinks of what Hana said, curled around her dæmon in Australia; _doesn’t that— wouldn’t that hurt?_ However much he tries to wrap his head around living apart from himself like that for over a decade, the deepest part of himself simply balks. Karma whines and presses his face into Jesse’s leg. _No_ , they think together, _not that._

"A dæmon is supposed to be the innermost part of a person,” Genji says. “In your case, the sensible part.”

“Oh _har har_.”

“She stayed, even when I would have killed her given the chance, in a last effort to fulfil Hanzo’s duty. His first duty, before the clan. His duty to protect me. During our fight, she—" Genji falters, his expression growing cloudy until he shakes his head and physically dismisses the thought. “In going against himself, she turned against him. I don’t know what it will take for Hanzo to reconcile with himself." Genji suddenly gives Jesse a sharp look. “Does _Hanzo_ know that you know?”

“I reckon he does. He said something, just before he left. Don’t know what it means myself—” Jesse repeats the Nipponese as best he remembers and Genji’s reaction is immediate. His eyes widen and he sits back in his chair — astonished, if Jesse has to put a word to it, “-but I reckon you do.”

Genji chews on the inside of his cheek. “It is... something you say to someone who understands you completely. Who will understand what you are saying even when you aren’t actually saying it.” He does a bad job not looking smug as hell and Jesse pulls his hat down to escape his knowing smirk. “Hanzo has always been a hopeless romantic.”

“Wouldn’t know nothin’ about that,” Jesse mumbles.

Genji grins, his scars pulling in ways Jesse never saw in Blackwatch, gentler seeming with the force of his smile. "Coming here, helping Overwatch — it was good for him. More than I could have hoped. Other things have been good for him too and I hadn't hoped for that at all," Genji adds with a sly look at McCree. "I don't think anybody would have thought you two would get along so well."

"Now hold on, don't go giving me credit for what your brother's done," Jesse immediately objects. "He's been the one who's been makin' friends, trustin’ people—”

"Do you think he could have done so without your help?"

“Can’t truthfully say I did anything to help,” McCree says with a helpless little shrug. “I only did what you asked and offered to drink with him. Told him I liked him just fine, n' I made sure he knew he was welcome around. But I—" he cuts himself off, and Genji snorts at whatever dumbfounded expression Jesse knows must be on his face.

It was foolish to think that the trust wouldn’t go both ways; as Hanzo trusted Jesse not to send him packing, Jesse trusted him to stay. Like a wave crashing into a beach, Jesse's realisation comes all at once and brings a great many things with it. He had been reaching out to Hanzo, but he hadn't realised until then just how much Hanzo had been reaching back. "Huh. Ain't that something."

"Whatever else you are to Hanzo, you have been his friend." Jesse hides under his hat, sure that his face is suddenly turning bright red. Genji chuckles and gets up from the kitchen table, cup in hand. "I want absolutely no details about anything you do with my brother."

"You got it," Jesse murmurs into his serape and doesn't look up again as Genji leaves the kitchen. "Knew he was trouble the moment I let him into the safehouse."

"We always liked trouble," Karma says, gazing up at him.

"Yeah," Jesse says, almost sighs wistfully.

He doesn't know how he'll be able to wait until Hanzo's back from Egypt to tell him, firstly, that McCree was mighty fond of him and then to ask him to dinner sometime. The two days the mission lasts seems to take an age and Jesse’s got a restlessness living under his skin he can’t seem to shake. Winston’s an awkward bundle of nerves when McCree sees him — the línghóu doesn’t do conflict well — but he doesn’t have any info for him. The team’s been transceiver silent since getting to Africa and they probably won’t hear anything ‘til they get back.

Jesse’s got no choice but to try and work out some of his nerves at the shooting range — and apologise to Hana, after she gives him a nasty glare from the other end of the training room.

There ain’t really any good excuse for what he said but she seems to accept his apology anyway. Her dæmon huffs and gives them a sour look but Jujak accepts the nose-nudge from Karma.

“Good, well, you’re forgiven,” Hana says brusquely. She twirls her pistol as she seems to consider something. “Hanzo said you might, you know, pull your head out of your butt and apologise. Guess _Oji-san_ got that one right too.”

“Hanzo’s good like that.” Jesse watches as Hana pops off a few shots and neatly nail the training bots in the middle of their chassis. Looks like those lessons with Hanzo were paying off. “Speaking of getting my head out of my butt,” he starts. Jesse grins at the snort and flat look she gives him for that awful segue. “I was thinking of asking Hanzo to dinner.”

“O-M-G, fucking _finally_.”

Hana’s watching him like a hawk as the Orca makes its slow descent into the hangar. McCree’s lasted two days since realising he’s got feelings for Hanzo, but those last few minutes waiting for the zeppelin ramp to lower are agonising. Genji and Hana are probably both sick to the back teeth of him ‘pining’, though Jesse would deny that’s what he’d been doin’ with a gun to his head.

He’s hoping that Hanzo’s the first out when the door slides open but it’s not to be. Tracer zips past him in a blue blur, not even stopping to say hi before she’s gone out of the hangar. It sets McCree on edge — had those been tears he’d seen?

Karma whuffs to get his attention, and Jesse turns back to the Orca to see Reinhardt storming down the ramp followed by Torbjörn and Brigitte. Torbjörn’s scowling but that’s nothing compared to the dark look on Reinhardt’s face, his dæmon’s ugly snarl. Jesse walks over to him. “Rein, what—”

“Do not ask,” Reinhardt says as he brushes past him, walking straight out of the hangar after Lena. Brigitte gives Jesse a stiff nod, looking down at him in her new power armour with her jaw clenched so hard it has to hurt. She doesn’t say anything either.

Torbjörn pauses only long enough to fix Jesse with an inscrutable look and pat at his hip. “I didn’t know either, lad,” he says before he walks out as well.

That’s more than concerning — that’s got Jesse going up the ramp to see what the hell is going on. His heart’s in his throat but he ain’t panickin’, he ain’t thinking about what could have happened because he wasn’t there to watch their backs.

Hanzo steps into the doorway and Jesse lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Brother,” Genji asks, standing at McCree’s shoulder. “What is going on?”

Hanzo looks like he wants to be anywhere but there, running his fingers up and down Stormbow. “I do not know—” he starts to say before heavy footsteps come up behind him and Hanzo has to either step aside or let them walk into him.

Soldier:76 casts a judgemental eye over the hangar bay from behind his visor. “Still the same base, after all this time,” he says, his voice a low rumble like rocks in a blender.

McCree frowns — he’s got the feeling he’s met the man before but there aren’t that many soldiers without dæmons that he’d forget one. Karma’s peering at him with all the fur on his spine standing on end, half a growl already building in his chest. Soldier:76 glances at him and Genji for only a moment before looking away in clear dismissal, walking down the zeppelin ramp with his huge pulse rifle slung over a shoulder.

“Why the hell we letting him in?” McCree says, not caring to lower his voice.

“What, Overwatch is supposed to be exclusive now?” Fareeha asks as she appears from inside the Orca. Her swallow dæmon swoops down off her shoulder to perch between Karma’s ears.

Jesse grins at her, his misgivings disappearing for the moment as he lays eyes on her for the first time in, Gods, _years_. “Has to be, they already filled their quota of ‘wanted outlaw and disreputable mercenary’ when they hired me.” Fareeha snorts as she wraps him up in a hug, damn near cracking his ribs. Jesse hugs her back just as fiercely. “Hey there, Pharah,” he says softly.

“You’re an asshole, Jesse McCree,” Fareeha murmurs into his shirt. “No word from you for years. I thought you’d _died_.”

“Naw, you know better’n that,” Jesse says, drawing back to look at her. The tattoo on her face is new — and for a moment he sees Ana in her, enough that his heart aches with it. She looks older, wiser, while he probably just looks worse. Fareeha’s looking him over too, the skin around her eyes tightening as she takes in the new wrinkles and scars he’s sporting. McCree was younger than she is now when he'd left Overwatch.

“Jesse, I wanted to tell you,” she says suddenly, tightening her grip at his elbows. “You disappeared though and there wasn’t a safe way to send word to you—”

“No tellin’ who can be listenin’ in on transceiver calls—”

“Right, but I wanted to tell you. Please don’t think I was keeping this from you.”

“Fareeha, what the hell?” McCree asks, brows drawn low. Fareeha’s looking at him with something like urgency on her face, but then her eyes flick to the inside of the Orca and McCree’s follow.

There’s a ghost standing in the Overwatch zeppelin, down an eye and hair greyer than last time Jesse saw her, but there’s no mistaking her or the vibrant green parrot dæmon at her shoulder. Jesse can’t help but stare as Ana Amari smiles back at him, the corner of her eye crinkling the exact same way it did 8 years ago, before she died. “Hello, _habibi_.”

Jesse turns on his heel and leaves.

***

There have been more awkward meetings that Hanzo was forced to attend, but he would not wish the debriefing after the return of Jack Morrison and Ana Amari to Overwatch on his worst enemy. Everyone present is either holding back tears, scowling balefully, or giving them a look so cold the room temperature plummets. If either of them realise, they show no sign of it as they speak quietly to Winston at the head of the table.

Hanzo does not care for them either way; the only one he cares about had walked away from the Orca without a single word. McCree’s face before he had turned away was like shattered porcelain, the sharp edges cutting deep and revealing something that should never have been brought to the light. He’d disappeared hours ago and Hanzo hasn’t been able to quash the worry that threatens to crawl up his throat and choke him.

Morrison removes his visor and sets it on the table. There’s a murmur of astonishment from the room, punctuated by a loud curse in German from Reinhardt. “His eyes, brother,” Genji says quietly in Hanzo’s ear. “And those scars. From the explosion, perhaps?”

The Commander steps to the table, wordlessly taking command of the debrief, and a hush falls. It is just as well; Winston can barely speak for stuttering. “My name was Jack Morrison,” he says lowly. “I was the Strike Commander of Overwatch, in another lifetime. I’m just an old soldier now.” He gazes sightlessly at the table in front of him before his eyes flick up to the doorway.

Hanzo turns in time to see McCree lean against the wall beside the door, his long legs crossed at the ankle and his hat pulled low over his eyes. He says nothing, not even to acknowledge the debriefing he has interrupted. His dæmon seats himself by Jesse’s boots, avoiding everyone’s eyes in favour of staring at the ground.

Morrison reaches for his visor and slides it back into place over his deep scars and pale eyes. “We’re all soldiers now, assembled for one reason. To bring down those people who threaten our world.” A hologram appears in the centre of the table, depicting the well-armed group they had faced in Egypt. “Captain Amari has been following the movements of a group from her base in the Necropolis, disrupting their operations when she could. They call themselves Talon.”

A different, similarly armed group appears. “This is the team that attacked Watchpoint: Gebraltarik before the Recall — Winston and Athena says they were after the database of agents. Like Overwatch, Talon is made up of soldiers and scientists, oddities. Unlike Overwatch, their methods of recruitment aren’t concerned very much with issues like morals and ethics.”

From the back of the room, McCree very quietly snorts. Chamaenerion curls up into a ball at his feet and hides his face beneath his paws.

“Both strike teams were led by the same man — a figure they call Reaper.” The silhouette in the centre of the table is indistinct, like the subject was moving too fast to be captured. From Hanzo’s position amongst the ruins in Egypt that’s how it had seemed. His arrows had not fazed the man in black, nor bullets or pulse rounds. Whether invulnerable or something else, Hanzo couldn’t say.

“We’ve got no intelligence on the man — he’s a ghost. Our working theory is he’s the subject of philosophical experimentation. We know Talon has an interest in theoretical philosophy since they’ve managed to acquire a device — the pet project of Moira O’Deorain, Overwatch’s resident geneticist, who had a special interest in Intercision.”

The device in the centre of the table is indecipherable to Hanzo but gives off a distinctive purple glow. The very sight of it sends a shiver through the room. The dæmons turn to their people; Jujak hides his face in Hana’s hair and Lena’s capuchin climbs into her jacket until only the end of his long tail is visible. Even Reinhardt’s lion dæmon seems cowed by the hologram of the device, their tail lashing as they let out a fearful growl. Chamaenerion pins his ears back but otherwise does not react.

However, McCree looks up. He catches Hanzo’s eye for a moment before looking at the hologram in the middle of the table. Morrison is staring at the device as well, seemingly unaffected by the malice it radiates in a way no animate object should be able to. “It stores the Dust that’s released when a person and dæmon are Severed. It can then reroute that power — that’s what caused the explosion at the Swiss base five years ago,” Morrison says in a low rumble. “It’s taken me five long years to find out the truth, and to find out where the damn thing was taken to. Now that we know, we can destroy it before Talon uses it to ruin more lives.”

For the first time since he’d entered the room, McCree speaks. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he says as he moves closer to the table. “I’ve seen this before, on a train ‘cross the states.”

Morrison turns to him sharply, scrutinising him from behind his visor. “You were there when Talon acquired it?”

“Kicked it off the train myself.” Morrison lets out a low growl and McCree’s face darkens with a dangerous look, his heavy brows drawing low over stormy eyes. “They were ex-Blackwatch. You know as well as I do how ugly their tactics can get. There were civilians on that train, innocent people—”

“You think you saved them when you gave Talon this kind of technology? You only put more lives in danger—”

“I wouldn’t start lecturing if I were you, _Commander_ ,” Jesse says in a voice dripping venom. “Or people might start to think you ain’t fazed by the notion of _collateral damage_.”

“Talon has a weapon now that could destroy countless lives because of your reckless decision,” Morrison shouts, leaning forwards and stabbing a finger at the hologram. “If you had used your head as something other than a place to keep your hat, you would have accepted the cost of keeping it out of their hands!”

Jesse slams his prosthetic fist down on the table hard enough to shatter the glass. “Your acceptable costs are bullshit, Morrison, and I’ll be cold in the ground before I let anyone else figure that out the way I did,” he says. It’s not loud but forceful, like he’s swearing something powerful into existence.

The hologram fizzles out, leaving Morrison and McCree to glare at each other from either end of the table. “You aren’t the only one to lose something, soldier,” Morrison says.

“But I’m damn well the only one who learnt from it,” McCree says darkly. He places his organic hand down palm-first on the table and leans forward, giving Morrison a scrutinising look of his own. “Where’s your dæmon, Jack? Where the hell is Philomela?”

Morrison stalks around the table, murder in every line of his body. McCree reaches for his gun and Hanzo takes a step in front of him but Morrison never makes it that far before Reinhardt grabs him by the arm and hauls him back. “Jack,” he says in warning.

Morrison jerks his arm out of his hold as Jesse takes a step away from the table. “To Hell with the lot of you,” McCree mutters. He walks out and Hanzo follows only a few minutes later; he has nothing to gain from watching old soldiers argue.

Athena is kind enough to direct Hanzo to where McCree is but he hesitates outside of McCree’s door, uncertain of his welcome with how they left things. His hand hovers over the door, his want warring with his self-preservation; this was very different from asking Jesse to gelato and drinks. Perhaps he should just leave...

“Door’s open,” McCree calls from inside his room. His voice gives away nothing, deep and smooth. It was his voice that Hanzo had first noticed, on that cold Parisian night.

Hanzo swipes his hand over the door lock and it slides open with a quiet hiss. He has seen parts of Jesse’s room, when Jesse himself is stood in the doorway and blocking most of his view, and the first thing Hanzo thinks on his first unobstructed view is that the room is very empty. There’s a bottle of whiskey on the desk and one of his _serapes_ on the bed, but nothing to disguise the cold walls or empty shelves. It makes Hanzo’s stomach sink for a reason he cannot quite pin down.

McCree is sat at his desk, his prosthetic arm detached and laid out in front of him. He has a pair of tweezers in his flesh hand and seems to be trying to pick out shards of glass from when he’d hit the holotable. It is the first time Hanzo has seen McCree be senseless in his violence, to break something without needing to. Jesse doesn’t look up, instead digging the tweezers in after a stubborn piece of glass while his detached arm twitches and flails. “Fuck,” he mutters viciously, gripping the tweezers like he is about to throw them across the room. Chamaenerion is nowhere to be seen.

Hanzo crouches down in front of Jesse. “May I?” he asks, palm out.

McCree drops the tweezers into his hand. “Knock yerself out.”

Hanzo nudges the arm closer to him to see what he is working with. McCree had removed the larger pieces without an issue but Hanzo can see there are several smaller shards of glass pressing against the prosthetic nerves, causing it to move. It must have been very painful — judging by how Jesse is gritting his teeth so hard a muscle in his jaw is jumping, it still is.

Hanzo is slow and careful as he extracts the glass from Jesse’s arm. They sit in silence for several long minutes, and though it is nothing new to them Hanzo finds it unbearable. He wants to speak to Jesse, ask him who Captain Amari is to him, or was. That question is unlikely to be welcomed though, so for lack of a better idea, Hanzo begins to speak.

“I lost my right leg above the knee when I was fifteen. Genji and I were trained from childhood to be weapons for the clan. To enter a building on silent feet, to end a life without remorse, and leave as quietly as we came. Genji turned it into a game — we spent many an evening after our lessons racing each other over the rooftops of Hanamura castle. I was better and it made me overconfident. A single poorly-judged jump and a bad landing, I fell from the roof and brought much of it down with me. I do not recall what happened after — except that Genji sent our dæmons for help and did not leave me.

“I woke up with my leg already gone. My father told me that it could not be saved — it was Genji that told me the truth. He had listened in on the doctors telling the elders that I would survive and might learn to walk again, but I would never again be jumping rooftops. They deemed this unacceptable for their heir and best weapon. I was never given a choice.

“Genji stayed by my side during the long months it took to learn to walk with the prosthesis. He would leave only long enough to go to his lessons but would always return — he did not have to. I did not thank him.

“I lost my left leg when I killed him. I do not — I remember very little about that night. I spent months in virtual seclusion, seeing only the nurses and doctors who helped me to walk once more. The elders who had asked so much of me did not care to visit, and with my father’s death, the only one who would have—”

McCree grabs Hanzo’s wrist, and his eyes snap up to McCree’s face. His brows are heavy, drawn low over an expression that makes Hanzo’s stomach sink further. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asks lowly.

Hanzo removes his arm from Jesse’s grip, placing the tweezers down on the desk. “Our lives have been hard, full of lessons that came with high prices, and we have both done things we regret. You are not alone, Jesse.”

“Y’think because ya fell off a roof one time and killed yer brother, that makes us the same kinda man?” McCree asks as he reattaches his arm. He is looking down at his desk, avoiding Hanzo’s eyes as shudders and presses his teeth into his lip — Hanzo knows that the prosthetic nerves reconnecting is excruciating but McCree makes no sound. “You know nothin’ about me, Hanzo Shimada,” he says eventually.

“That is not true.”

“Then yer deludin’ yerself. Ya made me look like a fool, thinkin’ yer dæmon was dead. I—” McCree’s face hardens as whatever he’d been about to say is cut off at the head. He stands up from the desk, kicking the chair away as he retreats to the other side of his room.

Under Jesse’s desk, at the very end with his back against the wall, Chamaenerion stares at Hanzo with wide eyes. They share a moment of brief, painful eye contact before the dæmon looks away.

“I’ve only ever been kind to you as a favour to Genji — I’ve got no love for fratricides and cowards,” McCree bites out, lips curling in a sneer. Hanzo stands and steps back towards the door. Jesse watches him go with dark eyes and trembling fists. “Now get out.”

The door slides shut just as quietly as it had opened, unfitting for the heavy weight of finality Hanzo feels pressing down on him. Hanzo takes a deep breath as he steps away from the shut door, then another. He should leave, he isn’t welcome, _Jesse told him to go—_

Something makes him look to his right and down — down at the little cat dæmon padding over to him. Hanzo gapes at her before snapping his mouth shut. What could he say to his dæmon that she did not already know? They were still connected however tenuously; Hanzo was still hers as much as she was his.

Hanzo seats himself on the floor beside McCree’s door. His dæmon comes closer, her delicate paws whisper quiet, until she stands only a scant few inches from him. The last time they were so close, Genji had still been whole, but Hanzo does not let the thought consume him like it could. Instead, he closes his eyes and embraces the quiet, the chance to be intimate with himself again.

He reaches out and his fingertips brush soft fur. She is warm and thrumming with their heartbeat — he had forgotten. Hanzo wonders how he ever could. Like forgetting the sound of his own name, and he lets it roll off his tongue for the first time in a long, long time.

“Mizazi.”

“ _Hanzo_ ,” his dæmon replies.

The ache from deep within Hanzo’s chest settles, and he breathes without pain for the first time in a decade.


	8. The Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Future, Malleability, Helplessness.

With the intelligence from Commander Morrison and Captain Amari combined with the network at Winston and Athena’s disposal, Overwatch has a better understanding of Talon. They know how they operate, what they look like. What their next targets are likely to be. When Athena sees reports online of an attack in Numbani by well-armed men in masks, they have the Orca prepared for take-off within the hour.

If the journey to Australia had been intensely awkward, the atmosphere on the trip to Numbani is quivering like a bowstring. Hanzo is not the only one surprised and relieved to see McCree stalk aboard the zeppelin with his wolf-dog dæmon at his heels, but he heads to the back of the Orca without a word to anyone. He spends the flight with the wide brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, his eyes and his head down, arms folded. Hanzo can just barely see the glowing end of his cigarillo, the shadows around his face twisting with the haze of smoke.

Hana shrugs when Hanzo glances her way and Genji only tilts his head silently. Nobody says anything either when Mizazi trots up the ramp moments before the engines roar as they take off. He is sure they are all looking his way, seeing how the cat dæmon sits closer to him than Genji — Hanzo should stare back, to show them he is not cowed. He might have, perhaps, but the only person whose opinion might have mattered is the only one not looking.

Captain Amari chuckles where she sits, her rifle across her lap and parrot dæmon perched on the scope. Hanzo looks her way but her single eye is focussed on the same man Hanzo’s also seem unerringly drawn too. “Habits are like old dogs,” she says with a small smile that doesn’t reach her eye. Amari glances over at Hanzo and gestures down — not at Jesse but his dæmon. It takes Hanzo a moment to see what she is drawing attention to; Chamaenerion is positioned as he always was, with his eyes on the door. “I see the way you watch him,” Amari says gently.

“I have seen it,” Hanzo replies, equally quiet. It feels as if they are discussing secrets. “It is a holdover from his Blackwatch days?”

“Older,” Amari says. “He has always watched out for Jesse. Since they were boys, most likely. Always keeping his eye on the exit.” She runs a finger down her dæmon’s back, a pensive expression on her face. “He has only run away twice since I have known him. The first time Jesse had been in Blackwatch six months and we were just beginning to trust him, when one day we awoke to find he had packed a bag and left.”

“He disappeared?” Hanzo asks. “Could Overwatch not locate him?”

“Oh, we knew where he was,” Amari says. “The moment we realised he was not on base we tracked him down. Jesse had walked to the nearest road and hitched a ride into town, bought a bus ticket with an Overwatch credit chit then bought a train ticket with the money he had stashed away under his bunk. He was clever but he was still only a boy, and one against many.” Despite her matter of fact tone, her expression is troubled. “We did not bring him in then. I thought we should but Gabriel convinced us to wait. Two weeks after his escape, Gabriel went and spoke with Jesse himself. I do not know what he said but Jesse came back with him, and he stayed right up until Overwatch was beginning to collapse around him.”

“Numbani,” her dæmon says, hopping along her rifle. “He left after what happened in Numbani.”

Hanzo looks from her dæmon back to her. “What changed?”

“He did.” Amari looks at McCree and the corner of her eye creases in pain. “I was — gone, by that time. But an animal in a trap will bite off his own paw to survive. That is Chamaenerion’s purpose — to survive.”

They land just outside the city limits and make their way into Numbani on foot. Hanzo had expected sirens, explosions, the sound of people in pain and frightened for their lives. Instead they find the city carrying on as normal. “Shimada, McCree,” Morrison says, slinging his pulse over his shoulder, “scout ahead, figure out the situation. Athena can direct you to the airport.”

McCree strides off without a word of acknowledgement. Hanzo nods at Morrison before hurrying after him. Mizazi can keep up with McCree’s long legs easily but she chooses to take a running leap on to Hanzo’s back and curl around his shoulders like an expensive scarf. Hanzo knows why the two of them were chosen — they are perhaps the ones least likely to attract attention — but he wishes his brother was there too, or Amari. Someone who knew Jesse better than Hanzo did, who could make sense of that dark expression, his dæmon’s silence.

_“You know nothin’ about me, Hanzo Shimada.”_

The airport is surrounded by Numbanian police — Jesse hangs back, chewing on the cigarillo in his mouth. Chamaenerion immediately looks for an escape route, his eyes darting around as his ears pin back. However, the large crowd milling about is more preoccupied watching the police and taking photograms than noticing any newcomers. Hanzo could get closer, it would be child’s play to disappear into throng, but if anyone were to recognise Jesse for his bounty...

“I smell pulse rounds,” Mizazi whispers into Hanzo’s ear.

Hanzo only has a moment to consider that information before a heavily modified OR15 defence bot walks out from between two police cars and immediately turns its optics on them. The crowd parts as the omnic trots over to them — Hanzo is already reaching for his bow and McCree has a hand on his pistol, when a small Numbanian girl appears from behind the omnic’s torso and waves at them. “Hello!” she says cheerily. “We should leave before someone sees your weapons and thinks you’re one of the bad guys.”

If anyone overheard her, they quickly forget as the police begin to escort several men in black out of the airport, and the low murmuring of the crowd rises to a cacophony as they all start to take photograms at once.

“Who are you?” Hanzo asks, lowering his hand from his bow. The pulse gun on the omnic’s arm is not raised and the girl, who cannot be more than nine, has an enormous grin on her face. Her dæmon in the form of a small bird perches on her shoulder. She could not look any less like the Talon members being loaded into a police van behind them, and Hanzo can see the moment McCree comes to the same conclusion as his fingers slips from his pistol to hook into his belt loops.

“I’m Efi, he is Ayokunle, and this is Orisa!” Efi says, patting the omnic on the back.

“Greetings,” Orisa says, turning her head. “I am Orisa. Your safety is my primary concern.”

Efi swivels around to ride astride, facing backwards as Hanzo and McCree follow behind the pair away from the airport. “Orisa detected your weapons as soon as you got close to the airport,” she continues. “Luckily for you, we figured you were with Overwatch and not the bad guys.”

“How’d you figure that?” McCree asks., rolling his cigarillo across his teeth with his tongue.

“Overwatch always arrives when there is trouble,” Efi says with the utter certainty only a child can possess. She scrutinises them — Hanzo does not know what she is looking for but he has the uncomfortable suspicion he will be found lacking. “I was hoping there’d be more of you, but it is OK, Orisa handled the situation. But I appreciate the help!”

“Ain’t that a nice change of pace?” Chamaenerion mutters from the back of their strange procession. “Almost enough to feel welcome.”

Efi’s dæmon flutters down off her shoulder and comes beak to snout with Chamaenerion. “It’s you!” he says, turning into a puppy and spinning around in circles, tripping over his own paws in his excitement. “I can’t believe it’s actually you!”

Efi jumps off the back of her omnic and looks up at McCree with wide eyes. “Are you Jesse McCree?” she asks quietly, suddenly shy.

Jesse gives her a strange look, the light of realisation dawning in his eyes. “Yer not...?”

“I am,” Efi says, grinning once more. “Seven years ago, when Doomfist attacked Numbani, you saved my life.”

For the first time in days, Hanzo sees Jesse smile.

***

Efi damn near talks his ear off on the way back to the others waiting at the zeppelin. Her dæmon keeps flitting between a bird and a puppy, like his excitement’s too big for one form. Karma rather likes the attention — it really is a nice change of pace to be welcomed somewhere. The Petras Act was a culmination of years of bad feeling towards Overwatch, thanks in no small part to Blackwatch. Morrison could only cover for Reyes so much before it all blew up in their faces.

Seeing Efi talk a mile a minute about being inspired by Overwatch, winning her grant and putting it to use the best way she knew how: to help people. Damn, imagine if they could get Efi and Lena in front of the UN.

Jesse turns back to Hanzo, a quip on his tongue about figuring out how to weaponise optimism, until he remembers they ain’t speakin’. That’s not true; they’d been speaking just fine until McCree had put an end to that. He’d been out of his own head in anger and spoiling for a fight, and he’d regretted every word of it the moment Hanzo had left so quietly.

Jesse could have kicked himself for not running out after him. Anybody else wouldn’t have had enough left of them to snore after McCree was finished with ‘em for saying something like that to Hanzo. Karma was more than happy to let him know what he thought of Jesse’s damn pride.

He turns back to Efi and tries to put Hanzo from his mind for now, flicking his cigarillo into the dirt. He’s lost the taste for it suddenly. Karma gives his wrist a bite hard enough to bruise; he knows what he has to do and if it hurts his prides, it’s nobody’s fault but his own.

Morrison gives Efi a scowl from behind his visor fierce enough to stop an elephant in its tracks. Orisa’s optics scan him up and down, clearly analysing the threat. “Greetings, Commander Morrison,” she says evenly, to which he only grunts.

Luckily, Ana makes a better impression when she crouches down and introduces herself to Efi, though there’s no need when Orisa greets ‘Captain Amari and dæmon Den’. Efi takes it all in stride, though she really comes to life when Torbjörn walks forward and gives her omnic an appraising look. Efi generously offers Orisa’s services to Overwatch in exchange for regular updates about how she’s doing and a spot on the team once she’s old enough. “I’d like to finish my education first,” she says with a shrug, and Torbjörn’s beard bristles in a way that could almost be approval.

They leave Torbjörn to keep an eye out for any more Talon activity in Numbani — and so he and Efi can compare notes. With a new team member, the atmosphere in the zeppelin is buoyant, even cheerful. Nobody got so much as a paper cut, and after watching Orisa go around scanning everyone and greeting them and their dæmons, there’s nothing to distract McCree from the cloud hanging around Hanzo, the haze of silence. It’s hard not to stare at the cat dæmon curled around his shoulders and murmuring into his ear occasionally. Like seeing in black and white your whole life until you’re introduced to colour; Hanzo was always handsome but like this he’s dazzling.

Karma whimpers at Jesse’s boots. “I don’t even know her name,” he says miserably.

McCree walks over to Hanzo and tries not to think too much about how everyone’s probably watching. They’ve all picked up on the tension between the two of them by now; Hana had told him exactly what kind of idiot he was. “Hey,” Jesse says quietly. He takes his hat off and sweeps a hand through his hair, his mouth twisting as words fail him in the face of Hanzo’s blank expression. Karma presses his nose into his flesh hand and Jesse buries his fingers in his fur. “Y’got a moment? I want... I’d like to talk to you. Please.”

Hanzo nods to the seat beside him. McCree breathes out a sigh of relief and hurries to sit, glad beyond speaking. His dæmon jumps from his shoulder and retreats to the other end of the Orca, and Hanzo looks back to his bow as he runs his fingers over the string. “What is it you wished to discuss?”

“What I said the other day — none of it was true. I shouldn’t have said any of it.”

Hanzo’s hands still. “Then why did you say it?”

McCree blows out a slow breath as he twists his hat around in his hands, looking down as he bends the leather back and forth. “I trust you. And it terrifies me.” He thinks Hanzo turns to back to him but Jesse’s too scared to look, terrified by what he might see written across his face. “The only people I’ve ever trusted, well, they’ve hurt me more than I’ve got words for. Ana taught me how to shoot and more besides, and Gabe... he wasn’t just my commander. I never got to tell him that before... before I left.”

Jesse rubs a hand over his mouth, like he can stop the way his lips tremble if he only tries hard enough. Hanzo is silent, and Jesse squeezes his eyes shut. What could he be thinkin’?

“What happened in Numbani? Why did you leave?” Hanzo asks quietly.

Jesse wants to laugh — it figures that would catch up to him now. He sighs instead, leaning back into his head rests against the humming wall of the zeppelin. “I was there seven years ago — not as part of the strike team trying to take down Doomfist, I was helping evacuate people. He was doing his best to level the city and a building was collapsing, right on top of this little kid. And I—”

He hadn’t given it any thought when he was running in; Jesse had seen a Numbanian woman screaming and pulling at the arms of the people holding her back, and in the shadow of the falling building a little girl too scared to do more than watch.

“I thought I was going to die that day. A full decade older than I ever thought, but nobody goes running into the path of a falling building and expects to come swaggering out again. Except I was still breathing — just short a limb.”

Jesse lifts his prosthetic hand. He’d tried to move, once the building had settled around him, only to be stopped short when his left arm seemed stuck. He’d gone numb up to his shoulder and in the dark of the collapsed building he couldn’t see it either. The panic had set up a dull thudding in the back of his head but Jesse had accepted it easily enough. If he’s going to die, there’s no point being precious about which parts of him go first.

All thoughts of his death had scattered when he heard a shuffle and a whimper in the dark space in front of him.

“Efi was unhurt though scared out of her mind. But we were stuck. Somehow my transceiver was still working after all that and Gabe was able to make contact. We could’ve been at the bottom of the ocean for all the difference it made.”

“ _—Cree? McCree, are you there? Jesse, I swear to God—”_

 _“I’m here,_ jefe. _M’even in one piece, mostly.”_

_“What’s your status?”_

_“Been better. I got a kid with me n’ we’re stuck under a building. Don’t know how stable it is but it’s holdin’ for now.”_

_“We had eyes on you when it fell, we know where you are.”_

_“Ain’t no rush.”_

Jesse takes a deep breath and all he can smell is the thick metallic stench of blood. Even after seven long years, he remembers how it’d dripped off his elbow and splattered in the dirt, how the tiny little space had reeked of death. “We were stuck there for over four hours,” Jesse says on a sigh.

_“Reyes, gotta sitrep for me?”_

_“Boss? Gonna need that rescue sooner rather than later.”_

_“Please, can anyone hear me? Please! Gabe!”_

McCree almost jumps out of his skin when a hand brushes his shoulder. He turns, wild-eyed, to Hanzo who looks just as surprised as he is. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to startle you.”

“No, yer — yer fine, darlin’, just got a little caught up in my own head,” Jesse says, rubbing the back of his neck as he tries to keep his heart from rabbitin’ out of his chest. Karma rests his chin on Jesse’s leg and Jesse holds on to him like a lifeline. “They got Efi out fine but I was a job and a half, by all accounts. Couldn’t give ya any details, my memory gets a bit hazy at that point, but apparently they had to cut my clothes from me while I was yelling and crying as much as I could with the blood loss and dehydration. Next thing I remember is being in an Overwatch medbay with Moira standing over me.”

“Moira O’Deorain?”

“The same. Even back then her bedside manner left a lot to be desired. First thing she says to me when I woke up is ‘look at the state of you’. Like I was—” Jesse clenches his fist, his jaw stiffening as even after so many years, the anger rises up again “—like I was a damn inconvenience, takin’ up her time when she could’ve been running one of her experiments. She kept talkin’ about how to get me field ready again as soon as possible. Genji got pretty beat up in his fight with Doomfist and all that mattered to her was gettin’ him back into active duty. And Gabriel, well... he didn’t say anythin’. Didn’t see hide nor hair of the man the whole time I was recuperatin’.

“I realised, lyin’ in that bed, I was only an asset to these people. A resource, only good to be used until I couldn’t be anymore. Deadlock at least hadn’t told me I was important, I knew where I stood with ‘em. I knew that if it came down to it, they’d leave me for dead. I felt like a damn fool for thinkin’ Overwatch would be any different. Figured my chances were better on my own terms — as soon as Moira fitted me with some new nerve endings, I was gone.”

Hanzo’s silence unnerves Jesse. He doesn’t know what he’d expected — he sure as hell didn’t want platitudes — but Hanzo’s chewing his lip to pieces as he struggles for words. McCree wishes he’d thought of a lie instead and is a little frustrated he hadn’t thought to before he’d word-vomited his whole sad life story at Hanzo like that. “That’s everythin’, I think. I’ll leave ya be now—”

Hanzo grabs at his wrist before McCree can even stand upright. “Stay, please. I need to— allow me a moment to _think_ —”

“Sure, darlin’,” Jesse says slowly. He can’t help but frown at Hanzo and bounce his leg as he tries not to run away like a coward. He’s always hated waiting, especially when it feels like all he’s got to look forward to is a guillotine or a bullet — McCree places his hat back on his head and resists the urge to hide beneath the brim.

Karma whimpers, and out of the corner of his eye Jesse can see his dæmon looking for an exit. Just behind him, Hanzo’s dæmon has come back to their side of the Orca, and she gently butts her head into Karma’s leg. He damn near jumps out of his own fur and she just laughs quietly — Hanzo’s dæmon has the same dorky giggle-snort he does.

Hanzo’s hand settles on McCree’s knee, stilling his fidgeting and bringing his attention back. Those wine-dark eyes of his are mirror black and staring straight back at Jesse. They’re still the prettiest damn eyes he’s ever seen. _Doomed from the very start_ , Jesse thinks. _Like a goddamn fool._

“You are important,” Hanzo says finally.

Jesse gets goosebumps and all of Karma’s fur stands on end. It’s too good to be believed though. “You don’t gotta say that, darlin’,” he says wearily. “Use me if you’ve got to, if needs be. It’s the _lying_ I can’t handle. Don’t... don’t let me think I’m loved when I’m not.”

Tears spill down Hanzo’s face. He’s just as surprised as Jesse, touching his own damp cheeks and making a soft noise as every blink causes more to fall.

“Oh damn, I’m sorry, sweetheart. What a stupid thing to say,” Jesse rushes out. He puts his arm over Hanzo’s shoulder and, when he isn’t immediately shrugged off, gently pulls him into a hug. Hanzo turns into him a little, enough to hide his face as he wipes the tears away. “I’m an idiot, don’t pay me any mind.”

“You’re not an idiot. You’re important to me,” Hanzo says wetly as his forehead meets McCree’s chestplate and his hands very gently tangle up in his _serape_.

Jesse wraps his arms around him and holds him close. “Yer fairly important to me too,” he says, ducking his head so his lips brush Hanzo’s temple. “I’m sorry I told ya different. It was heartless n’ a lie.” Hanzo peeks up at him with hope in his eyes. Jesse gently cups his jaw, brushing his thumb over the line between Hanzo’s beard and skin — he can’t believe he ever thought Hanzo was hard to read. He’s an open book, if you bother to learn how. “When we get back to base, we should get some gelato. My treat.”

Hanzo’s hand slips up to rest against his neck, archery calluses on soft skin. McCree’s sure he can feel how his heart’s racing again but he knows Hanzo won’t use it against him. “Was that an invitation for a date, McCree?” Hanzo asks.

“Depends entirely on if yer takin’ me up on the offer.”

“I think I would like to,” Hanzo murmurs. He blinks slowly, and his thick eyelashes are damp against the pink skin of his cheek. His hand curls around the back of McCree’s neck.

“Then yeah, sweetheart, it’s a date.” Jesse has to try not to get lost in his eyes, his warm hand on him. “I’d really like to kiss you now, but I understand if you’d—”

Hanzo’s lips taste like salt water and Jesse lets out a little huff — could’ve let him finish what he was sayin’ first. He can’t bring himself to mind much when Hanzo tilts his head a little and their lips slot together, warm and a little chapped and even more perfect. It sends warm ripples down Jesse’s spine all the way to his toes — someone makes a bitten off noise but he honestly couldn’t say who. He’s holding Hanzo’s face so gently, and when he draws back and opens his eyes very slowly, the dazed look on Hanzo’s face has Jesse in awe.

The Orca rocks suddenly, throwing Jesse and Hanzo together. Karma and Hanzo’s dæmon go skidding across the zeppelin’s floor from where they’d been curled up together and McCree only just keeps Hanzo from braining himself on his chestplate. “What in the _hell_ —?”

“Sorry about that, luvs!” Lena announces through the zeppelin’s inter-transceiver. “We’re not headed home just yet. Another message from our mysterious skull-faced benefactor came through and the Commander wants us to check it out.”

Hanzo moves towards the cockpit and McCree follows, adjusting his _serape_ where Hanzo had tugged it crooked. Jack and Ana are up at the front too, stood beside Tracer in the pilot’s chair. “We received another message?” Hanzo asks, his dæmon jumping up to curl around his shoulders once more.

“See for yourself,” Lena says and points to one of the screens. In stark black and purple are some of the trademarks of their mysterious friend; a set of coordinates and their skull logo. Instead of a photogram, however, are the words ‘IT WAS A DISTRACTION’. “We’ve already put in the coordinates. Looks like we’re headed to Ecopoint: Antarctica, lads.”

They get Winston on the transceiver to let him know of the change in plans. The línghóu lets out a thoughtful noise. “Ecopoint: Antarctica? There was a research team based out there, studying the Aurora Australis — that’s the southern lights.”

“Much obliged, Winston.”

“I don’t know what happened to them or their research, I haven’t seen any references to it in Athena’s databanks. You should see if you can find out what happened, but no, I can’t think what interest the old Ecopoint might have to Talon. Be careful out there.”

“Thank you, Winston,” Ana says. “Amari out.” She flips off the zeppelin’s transceiver and turns to Jesse and Hanzo, her small smile immediately widening. McCree wants to rub at his mouth like he can wipe away the evidence of what he and Hanzo were doing before they got interrupted — whatever else is going on between them, Ana is still almost like a mother to him and he doesn’t want her knowing all of that. “It will be a while before we arrive,” she says gently. “You should both go back to your seats and get some rest.”

Hanzo nods and heads out of the cockpit. Jesse tries not to blush too hard when Ana gives him a wink before he ducks out too. They head back to where they were sitting, shoulders bumping together comfortably as they settle in for the long trip down to Antarctica. McCree’s feelin’ lucky though, and he slowly stretches out his arm until it rests on the back of Hanzo’s seat, leaving it there as an open invitation.

It’s a little cheesy, and Hanzo gives him a flat look and snorts, but he also shuffles closer and leans in until his head is resting on Jesse’s shoulder. Jesse settles his arm over Hanzo’s shoulders and his heart damn near bursts at the pleased little hum he gets in return.

McCree peeks down and finds their dæmons curled up together again — Karma looks up at him and thumps his tail against the floor, grinning like a fool. “Her name’s Mizazi,” Karma says as she purrs softly from her warm perch on top of him.

A thought occurs to McCree and he turns to speak quietly to Hanzo. “It’s pretty cold in Antarctica.”

“Yes, I would assume so,” Hanzo says slowly, giving him a look out of the corner of his eye like he doesn’t know where Jesse is headed with this.

“I mean, darlin’, that yer still dressed for Africa.” McCree gestures at his thin _kyudo-gi_. “And as much as I love the get-up—”

“It is not a ‘get-up’,” Hanzo says indignantly.

“Yer gonna freeze. Ya got any clothes packed away somewhere, something warmer to change into?”

“No, I have nothing. It was hardly prudent for a mission to Numbani.” A look crosses Hanzo’s face like he’s kicking himself for his lack of hindsight, before he sets his jaw in a stubborn line. “I will be fine.”

“Yer always fine, babe,” Jesse says immediately, and grins when Hanzo rolls his eyes like he isn’t fightin’ his own smile. “Here—” Jesse starts wiggling out of his _serape_ until Hanzo’s hands stop him.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m givin’ ya my _serape_ , it’ll keep ya plenty warm—”

“And what of you? You do not travel with a spare, you will be cold.”

“I’m more wrapped up than you are, I’ll be fine—”

“As will I, without you needing to freeze for me.”

“Hanzo, pumpkin—”

Their argument grinds to a halt at the pained-sounding groan from the other end of the Orca. They turn as one to see Hana with her hands over her face and muttering darkly until she peeks over her fingers at them. “You guys are so disgusting, I can’t even right now. It’s literally sickening to listen to.”

Hanzo’s face grows tight but Jesse just huffs at her. “Don’t be a brat, kid, nobody’s making ya listen.”

“You’re doing it right there, in front of my salad!” Hana whines. Hanzo curses suddenly in Nipponese and whips around to where Genji is sitting. He has his head down and his visor is dark, almost like he’s sleeping. “Oh yeah, don’t worry about Genji,” Hana says, flapping her hand. “He went into, like, power saver mode as soon as you two started getting cuddly.”

“Observe,” Orisa says, and helpfully waves her hand in front of Genji’s face. He doesn’t so much as flinch. “He has no knowledge of his surroundings and did not observe your kissing, Agents Hanzo and McCree.”

“Thank you, Orisa,” Hanzo chokes out, his face flushing darker with every moment.

“Genji already knows, honey-bunch,” Jesse says, trying for a soothing tone. It doesn’t seem like it works as Hanzo jerks around to face him with wide eyes and a panicked expression. “I went to him after, you know, our talk. In Gebraltarik, before you left for Egypt? After you said yer thing about—”

“You asked Genji what it meant?” Hanzo asks weakly. When Jesse can only shrug and nod, he groans and hides his face in his hands.

“He seemed OK with it, sweetpea,” Jesse says uncertainly, almost making it into a question. Hanzo only groans louder.

“Yeah, and the way Jes is going with the pet names, everybody else is going to know soon enough anyway,” Hana adds loudly. Jesse starts to flush red as well, and Hanzo peeks out from behind his hands to give him a bright-eyed smirk. “So let your boyfriend give you his jacket, _Oji-san_ , and spare the rest of us your flirting, _please_.”

Hanzo huffs but acquiesces with a simple “ _fine_ ” that shouldn’t make Jesse’s heart thump the way it does. He looks damn fine in red though and when Jesse says as much, Hanzo gives another huff and drags him in by the collar of his shirt for a kiss.


	9. The Alpha and Omega

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finality, Process, Inevitability.

The landing pad at Ecopoint: Antarctica is almost entirely frozen over and Lena has difficulty landing the Orca without letting it skid into the side of the glacier the Ecopoint is half-buried in. “Phew! Think that’s all the excitement we’re gonna be getting here,” she says, her dæmon jumping up to her shoulder from where he’s been watching from the window, taking in the derelict-looking research station. Wherever the research team was, it was no longer here.

Morrison grunts as he hefts his pulse rifle. “Winston’s sent a map so we’ll be splitting into four teams to cover the whole base before our balls freeze off.

“D.Va, you’re with McCree. Head to the Cryo Labs, there’s a chance the researchers went into cryo sleep before the place was shut down. Genji, Orisa, you have storage. Amari, Tracer, living quarters. See if you can find out what happened to the researchers. Shimada, you’re with me. We’re going to Engineering to see if we can pull some of their data, see what Talon might be interested in. Any questions?”

“No sir,” Jesse drawls thickly, rolling his eyes with his back to the Commander. Morrison only grunts again and heads for the exit. Cold air immediately sweeps into the zeppelin and steals everyone’s breath away. The smaller dæmons all retreat into their people’s clothing, leaving Chamaenerion alone to brave the cold. Jesse isn’t much better off, his cheeks already going pink from the cold.

“Jesse?” Hanzo asks quietly as he looks at the frozen research base.

“Yeah, darlin'?”

He adjusts the _serape_ , jostling Mizazi who chirps in protest. “Perhaps not gelato. I think I would prefer to stay inside, where it’s warm.”

“Baby, that’s the best damn idea I’ve heard all day,” Jesse says. He tips his hat to Hanzo, his eyes shining with affection. “Take care of Jack, OK? He’s an ornery old bastard but we need him.”

“I will. Stay safe, Jesse.”

“Don’t know what could happen to me all the way out here but I will, darlin’. I got a date I wouldn’t miss for the world,” Jesse adds with a cheesy wink that Hanzo hates for the way it makes him warm, more even than the _serape_ does.

“Ugh, gross,” Hana complains loudly. “C’mon, cowman, let’s go so I don’t have to keep watching you old people flirting.”

“You’re just _jealous_ —” They keep up their argument over the transceiver, much to Morrison’s irritation, but there is no need for silence. The faded and cracking sound is the only accompaniment to the wind whistling between the buildings. The base has been abandoned since Overwatch disbanded and possibly longer — what use it could be to Talon and their weapon, Hanzo cannot say.

The oppressive silence of the base does its best to squash all conversation and they eventually trail off. “Place is down right spooky,” Jesse says after several long and quiet minutes. “Be glad to be back outta here.”

“We have arrived at storage,” Orisa says over the transceiver.

“There’s nothing but instant noodles and bottled water in here,” Genji adds. “These researchers ate worse than Matt Damon on Mars.”

“The level of supplies is extremely depleted and would not have sustained the base for longer than a week,” Orisa says.

“Hey guys! We’re at the living quarters,” Lena says. “It’s all still here, nothing’s even been disturbed save for a little frost. Like everyone’s just popped off and expects to be back in a jiffy.”

“Very spooky,” Amari agrees. McCree lets out a small snort.

“We’re just outside Engineering,” Morrison says into the transceiver. “We’ll figure out what the hell happened here.”

The base’s anbaric generators had failed at some point, leaving all the doors open and the emergency lighting a ghostly glow at their feet. They follow the trail to the room labelled ‘Engineering’ on the map Winston provided and step inside; the first thing both of them notice is that the room is not empty.

Reaper turns towards them, his bone-white mask almost seeming to float in the dark room while the edges of his black coat billow like a smoke cloud. Morrison has his pulse rifle up in a moment but Reaper surges forward, faster than a mortal man, and grabs the gun by the barrel. His talons sink into the metal like it’s made of paper, ripping through it before Reaper tosses it aside.

Hanzo brings up Stormbow. “Reaper is here!”

The man’s mask jerks in his direction and he thrusts out a hand, sending forth a black wave from the depths of his coat that coalesces into a huge wolf with a multitude of blinking eyes. The creature knocks Hanzo on to his back and pins him with massive paws on his shoulders and its snarling muzzle full of razor teeth an inch from his face.

Mizazi leaps out from the _serape_ with a yowl and swipes at the creature. Her paw passes through the wolf like she’s striking at water and the creature only snarls. The wolf bites down on her — someone screams and Hanzo doesn’t know if it’s him or his dæmon — but it doesn’t snap its teeth shut. The monster holds the thrashing dæmon in its grip and Hanzo tries to fight too, but another teeth-filled maw sprouts from the side of the creature’s face and it shoves him to the ground.

Morrison takes a swing but Reaper catches his fist with ease and sinks his talons into Morrison’s neck, lifting him to dangle choking and helpless in his grasp. He rips the visor from Morrison’s face. “Jack,” Reaper says in a rasping voice, one that whispers and growls in a chorus. “You should have stayed dead, Jack.”

“G-Gabe?” Morrison gasps. Hanzo flinches beneath the wolf — _Reaper cannot be Gabriel Reyes, he cannot_ — and the monster snaps its teeth in his face. “How... what happened to you?”

“Death couldn’t hold me. I still had some unfinished business.” He lifts Morrison higher, who scrabbles at his hold around his throat. “Primarily with you.” Reaper tightens his hold as he starts to throttle Morrison.

“Reaper,” Hanzo gasps, choking when the wolf monster presses down on his chest.

“Sorry, _amigo_ ,” an unfamiliar voice says through the transceiver. “Can’t have you alerting your friends. They got more important things to do than get between these two’s lovers spat.”

Reaper drops Morrison, who collapses in a gasping heap. “Sombra,” Reaper growls. “I told you not to interfere.”

“I’m not! Just lettin’ your audience know what’s the what, it’d be rude to leave him in the dark.”

Reaper grunts, advancing on Hanzo. “You’re right, I should kill him first.” The wolf monster dissolves into smoke as Reaper manifests a shotgun and levels it at Hanzo. Hanzo glares back, chest heaving but calm as he looks down the barrel of his gun. Mizazi hisses but Reaper doesn’t so much as glance at her; his focus is entirely on Hanzo, until he feels Reaper’s eyes lower. He nudges at McCree’s _serape_ with his gun. “Where did you get this?”

Hanzo bears his teeth at him. “ _Jigoku ni ochiru!_ ”

Reaper growls and throws aside his shotgun, which dissolves before it hits the ground, and grabs Hanzo by the _serape_. He hauls him up and slams him into the wall, knocking his head hard enough to see stars. “Where did you get that _serape_?” Reaper growls again.

Hanzo spits at him. Reaper makes a noise of pure rage and his edges blur as he seems to lose control of his form. His mask is the only constant as the rest of Reaper becomes a writhing mass of smoke, clawed hands twisting into gnashing maws that snap and blink with dozens of eyes. He’s monstrous; whatever remains of Gabriel Reyes has been twisted into a creature beyond recognition.

“Yo, Gabe,” Sombra interrupts again. “I think I can help with that. You would not believe the security in their zeppelin, a child could’ve hacked it.”

A holoscreen appears at Reaper’s side. He doesn’t look for a long moment, still staring at Hanzo and growling, until a flicker of movement catches his attention. From where Hanzo hangs, caught in Reaper’s claws, it is not hard to follow the recording of McCree pulling off his _serape_ and handing it to Hanzo. Jesse’s look of delight is plain to see, though there is no sound to capture his ridiculous compliments.

Reaper watches in silence as Hanzo pulls Jesse in to quiet his foolishness with a kiss. The recording starts to play again until Reaper snarls and swipes at the holoscreen, making it scatter and disappear. _“Sombra_.”

“What? You wanted to know what your _vaquero_ was doing so I told you. I just might have, y’know, edited it a little bit.”

Reaper grunts. “Where is McCree now?”

“ _Un momento_ , Gabe!” Sombra says cheerily, decidedly unthreatened by him. “Oh no.”

“What?” Reaper snaps, and in lieu of a reply another holoscreen appears at his side. Hana and McCree are pinned down by a group of armed mercenaries, taking cover behind a crate but hopelessly outnumbered. Hana has her defence matrix up and is keeping the men at bay while McCree looks around for an exit.

Hanzo struggles, half a protest in his throat, and Reaper wordlessly tightens his grip and keeps watching.

McCree points at an open door and rolls through it, his dæmon at his heels. The door slams shut behind him and the view suddenly changes, switching to a different camera as McCree bangs his fists against the closed door, soundlessly calling out to Hana on the other side. He twists around, Peacekeeper lowered and ready to fire, but he jerks suddenly as the door is covered in a spray of blood.

“No!” Hanzo gasps and starts to struggle harder. He can only watch as Jesse falls to his knees, clutching at his shoulder as Peacekeeper falls from his limp hand. Chamaenerion is there, keeping him from collapsing, but they look so small as a tall figure approaches them. The recording ends.

“Gabe,” Sombra says urgently. “Akande’s here, and he brought her too! I didn’t know that, _mierda_ , why didn’t I know that?”

Reaper’s grip on Hanzo loosens for a split second before he grasps him even tighter. They’re suddenly moving, rushing through the frozen hallways of the old Ecopoint. Hanzo gasps, his vision going black. He thinks he hears his dæmon scream before he knows nothing else.

***

Gettin’ shot never got any easier. Jesse clutches at his bleeding shoulder and grimaces as behind him Hana swears wildly in Corean, trying to hold her own against the team that ambushed them. No helping her now though, that door is locked solid behind him.

Moira’s got her hand splayed over the frosted glass of one of the cryo tubes and is leering at one of the poor bastards left in there. “Look at the state of you. Frozen for a decade, imagine what it would do to her physiology? Imagine what I could learn from her.”

“Then this will have not been a complete loss,” Doomfist says as he walks over to McCree, a haughty look in his eyes. “How easily the sheep are led to their own slaughter.” His snake dæmon, wrapped around his shoulders, flicks her tongue languidly.

“Were you the one sending us those messages then?” Jesse grunts, blinking hard to keep his eyes from blurring.

“No, that was the rat in our midst,” Doomfist says with a lotta confidence for a man admitting their organisation’s leakier than the pipes back home. “Easy to manipulate however, and soon the trap will spring and the rat will be caught.”

McCree grins. “Thought we were sheep.”

“You are all beneath me,” Doomfist sneers. “Vermin or not, being rid of you only makes me stronger.”

“Bloody Hellfire,” Karma mutters, “ain’t had to sit through a goddamn villain monologue in a while.”

There’s a distant rumble of an explosion from somewhere behind them that sets the door shaking and thick smoke rolling under the door. McCree tries not to think about Hana’s MEKA detonating, of last resorts and how vulnerable it leaves her with nothing but a jumpsuit and a little peashooter of a pistol. Gods, he hopes nobody else has been ambushed — _let the others be safe_ , Jesse thinks, because he doesn’t reckon on his own chances.

At the back of the room, the damn woman who shot him gracefully uncrosses her legs and stands from where she’d been sat on the ominous purple device Talon and Jack seemed to care so much about. Her blue morpho butterfly dæmon flutters to rest on the end of the barrel of her sniper rifle, but her eyes when she looks at McCree are completely hollow.

 _Intercision_.

Worse than killing her — when they’d Severed her from her dæmon, they’d butched her in the most profound way people knew how. That dæmon of hers was more like a cauterized wound where her emotions had once been, her creativity, her compassion and empathy. Everything bright and beautiful in a person and _they’d cut it out_.

Jesse shivers and Karma presses close to him. More than the bullet wound, that scares them.

A cold wind starts blowing through the Cryo Lab, glancing knife-sharp over Jesse’s skin, and it picks up quickly until it’s howling in his ears. Jesse throws up his arm over his eyes, and when the wind dies down just as quickly as it came, a dark cloud has blown in. It settles into the shape of Reaper, his edges of his coat lashing around his boots.

“Ah, Reaper,” Doomfist says amiably, like the man he’s addressing ain’t mostly an amorphous mass of pissed off tentacles. “You have decided to join us then?”

Reaper grunts and throws something to the ground in front of him. The something groans in pain, uncurling enough that Jesse recognises Hanzo. He makes a choked noise as Hanzo blinks sluggishly, slowly taking in the room around him. Jesse shuffles closer, the tiny movement sending lancing pain down his side. “I’m here, Hanzo,” he says.

Hanzo mumbles Jesse’s name, and his dæmon uncurls herself from him and makes a piteous sound. Jesse opens his mouth to reassure him, let him know he’s safe, when Doomfist gives a quick jerk of his head. The cold end of a sniper rifle presses into the back of Jesse’s neck — he hadn’t even heard her walk over.

“Silence,” she says, a simple warning Jesse decides is in his best interest to heed.

Doomfist has already turned his attention away and is looking at Hanzo entirely too thoughtfully. “Hello, Hanzo. It has been a while since we last spoke, I hope you have reconsidered my offer since then.”

Hanzo struggles into _seiza_ , looking like he’s been hit round the head as he squints at Doomfist. “Ogundimu,” he rasps. “I thought I made my position clear.”

“You did, but the situation has changed since then.” The rifle is a blunt weight pressing into Jesse’s neck and he must make some noise as Hanzo glances at him — only a brief flicker, barely enough for their eyes to meet, but it’s enough for Doomfist to smile. “Perhaps you might reconsider your position, given these changes.”

“I will need reassurance,” Hanzo says.

“My word is not good enough?”

“No,” he says coldly, looking every inch the _yakuza_ crime lord he’d been born to be.

What they’re bartering for is Jesse’s freedom — Jesse’s in exchange for Hanzo’s. “Now hold on—”

The rifle presses into his neck more insistently, forcing Jesse to curl into himself or risk gettin’ more gun-shaped bruises. “ _Silence_ ,” the sniper hisses again.

Jesse lifts his hands, reaching for the sky. “I’m not lettin’ Hanzo sell himself to Talon for me,” he says, looking Hanzo in the eyes as he speaks. Something flickers there but McCree turns away, looking at Doomfist. “Ya want a man that bad then I’m yer huckleberry. I’ll join Talon if ya let Hanzo go.”

Doomfist seems to consider him, taking McCree in in his entirety. “And what could you offer me?”

“Name’s Jesse McCree, don’t reckon we’ve been introduced yet—”

“McCree—” Hanzo grits out.

“—I’m ex-Blackwatch. Been working solo last couple of years, bounty huntin’ mostly, but I know the tactics. Pretty sure I originated a few of them myself,” Jesse says, talking right over Hanzo. He talks fast, knowing Hanzo’s depending on it. “Yer men seem like they know the basics — that was a pretty neat li’l ambush ya pulled back there, I’ll give ya that — but they ain’t got any creativity. A single OR15 bot managed to apprehend the lot of them in Numbani—”

Reaper lets out a rough growl and Doomfist is already turning away in dismissal. “They were fools,” he says. “I do not need a tactician. I am uninterested in your offer, McCree—”

“Wait!” Jesse yells, desperation finally bleeding into his voice. Doomfist turns back to him, a dangerous expression on his face. McCree takes a deep breath, carefully considering his next words. “I have a bounty on my head. Ya let Hanzo go, you can sell me back to the Deadlock gang. 60 million dollars ain’t nothing to sneeze at.”

Moira makes an interested noise and leans in. “Oh yes, I could finish what I started all those years ago with your arm. It would even leave you in enough pieces to satisfy that lot. It’ll be a shame to lose out on the Shimada, I’ve always wanted to know by what mechanism they were attached to their dragons, but yes.” She grins widely, her skin stretching over the bones of her face. “You’ll do.”

McCree swallows thickly and Karma lies down, his head on his paws. He doesn’t protest; the two of them are in perfect agreement. “Anything, just so long as ya let Hanzo go.”

Doomfist gives him another appraising look, and Gods, Jesse hopes he sees something more than a scruffy cowboy. He needs to, he _has_ to.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hanzo is giving him another heartbroken look. “Jesse,” he whispers.

Reaper’s gone almost still, his coat tendrils floating as he waits. They’re all waiting for Doomfist’s answer. “Very well, McCree,” Doomfist says. “I accept your offer.”

“Like Hell,” Reaper growls. He pulls two shotguns from the depths of his coat and aims them at Doomfist, pulling the trigger just as Doomfist swings his gauntlet around to block it.

The impact of the shells forces Doomfist back a step, and Jesse uses the explosive gunshot as cover to unsheathe the knife in his boot and take a swing at the sniper. She dances out of the way, swearing coarsely in French, which gives McCree just enough space to grab Peacekeeper and fire two, three shots at her. “Hanzo!”

Hanzo’s hands dig into the muscles of his arms, and Karma scoops up Mizazi, and together they shuffle their way out of the firefight that’s broken out amongst Talon. Reaper unloads his shotguns on Doomfist until they click and he tosses them aside like garbage. He turns to smoke when Doomfist charges at him and swings his gauntlet, leaving a crater in the ground but not even grazin’ him as he darts away. Reaper reforms on the other side of the Cryo Lab, laughing darkly while he pulls another pair of shotguns from his coat and starts firing again.

They’re all so busy with Reaper’s mutiny, nobody notices Hanzo setting Jesse down between two cryo tubes and yanking off his _serape_ to press to his bleeding shoulder. “Do you know why-?”

“Not a damn clue, darlin’,” Jesse grunts. He presses his hand over Hanzo’s, keeping the pressure on his wound steady. “Yer not hurt, are ya?”

“I am unharmed,” Hanzo says. He glances at the fight still happenin’ — neither Reaper nor Doomfist seem to be gettin’ the upper hand. Moira and the sniper are stayin’ out of their way too, looks like. “And if you insist that you have been injured worse than this before, I am throwing you out there to take your chances.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t.” The tiny space between cryo tubes is pretty crowded with two people and their dæmons. Jesse can see every little freckle on Hanzo’s face, the little mole behind his ear he’s so fond of. Karma’s got his eyes on the fight too, and the little cat dæmon is curled up safe between his paws. “Lot colder here than in Paris.”

“You are still just as foolish,” Hanzo snaps. He shifts his hold on the _serape_ and Jesse grunts as it shifts against his bullet wound; despite the stormy look on his face, Hanzo’s hands are gentle, and his mouth trembles even as he bites out every word. “Stubborn, _self-sacrificing_ —”

“Yer not a stranger anymore,” Jesse murmurs. “Still like yer convictions.”

Hanzo mutters a curse in Nipponese, looking mad enough to bite himself. “ _Fuck_ my convictions, McCree,” he says. “I will not ask you to sell yourself to a group such as Talon for me.”

“Don’t recall ya asking me anythin’.’ Jesse grins. It’s getting kinda hard to breathe, like a band’s around his chest and someone keeps cinching it in every time he breathes. “Ya got a plan, darlin’?”

“I am thinking,” Hanzo says, looking back out at the fight. Doomfist’s dæmon is on the ground fending off the creature that’s like a nightmare manifest, only mostly corporeal and covered in eyes. The snake dæmon hisses, mouth agape and hood flaring, before striking like a boxer. Reaper’s creature snarls, its many mouths open and howling.

Jesse grits his teeth. “Ain’t no rush.”

Karma’s eyes dart over to the cryo tube beside him, staring at nothing as he starts to growl. An octopus dæmon appears, dropping his cloaking device and waving a tentacle at them. “ _Hola, amigos_ ,” he says cheerily.

Karma squints his eyes and growls suspiciously but Mizazi fixes the octopus dæmon with a intense look, her whiskers twitching. “Sombra is here?”

“ _La caballería está aquí!_ ” Jesse can’t be sure, but he thinks the dæmon gives them a wink before disappearing again.

“What does that mean?” Hanzo asks, looking to Jesse.

“It means,” he says as he struggling to sit up. Hanzo helps him, an arm around his waist and a hand pressing the makeshift bandage at his shoulder. Jesse is bleeding through it, there’s a fogginess in his brain and heaviness in all his limbs that comes from blood loss. It doesn’t matter though, ‘cause— “it means ‘the cavalry’s here’.”

McCree gets up just in time to see her dropping her cloak by the door: a woman with bright purple hair and a number of holoscreens she’s tapping rapidly at. She might have gone completely unnoticed if not for Moira. “You!” Moira yells as she stands from between two cryo tubes and points an accusatory finger. “I knew we couldn’t trust you, Sombra, you sneaky little rat.”

“Aw, Moira, that hurts. I really thought we had something, you know?” Sombra says, clutching at her chest with one hand and pouting. Her other hand is still tapping away furiously. Moira snarls and hurls a biotic sphere at her that Sombra easily ducks, letting it explode against the door. “Just me? Oh well. Sorry, but naptime’s over.”

The door on the cryo tube pops open at the same time the lights on the door blink on for the first time in nearly a decade. Sombra wiggles her fingers and cloaks herself in time to avoid Orisa bursting into the Cryo Lab, a hard light shield on her arm and her fusion driver pointed straight at Doomfist. “Greetings!” she calls before she opens fire.

Lena zips in around Orisa’s shield and crouches down beside Hanzo and Jesse. “Not to worry! The cavalry’s—“

“We know, Lena.”

She pouts at him but quickly takes in the blood-soaked _serape_ and the drawn look on Hanzo’s face, how his eyes have gone tight. “You gonna be OK, luv?”

“Yeah, I’ll live,” Jesse grunts.

“Y’know, one day that stubborn arse of yours is going to get you into serious trouble.” She winks at Hanzo. “Lucky for you, Hanzo’s got you covered. Cheerio!”

She blinks away before Hanzo can do more than looked pained. McCree just shrugs and tries not to let on how much that little movement hurts. “Told ya they already knew.”

Doomfist can’t defend against the rapid fire of Orisa’s fusion drive, the potshots Lena’s taking from behind her barrier, and the explosive power of Reaper’s shotguns. He’s forced into a corner, hemmed in by cryo tubes. Doomfist has his gauntlet on the side of one of them and is down on one knee — McCree thinks he’s going down.

But then his gauntlet clamps down, crushing the cryo tube like a tin can, and he hurls it at Orisa. It catches her around the torso, bursting her hard light shield like a bubble and making her stumble. He follows it up with a devastating blow that crumples Orisa’s chassis and sends the omnic flying across the room. She crashes into the wall and collapses, her servos whining and optics flickering before she goes still.

Lena screams and hesitates, flinching away when Doomfist turns to her. Genji has his blade drawn and levelled at Doomfist, while in the doorway Jesse sees Ana tending to Hana. Her face is all covered in blood but she’s alive and Jesse gives thanks for small miracles. Jack’s with them, sans visor and rifle — they’re all here.

They’re here, and so is Doomfist.

And Moira, who’s stood with her hands like claws and a pinched expression. Like the face she’d had while Jesse laid in that medbay bed; impatient and angry about it. Her ugly little mole rat dæmon noses his way out of her coat to watch events.

And Reaper, with his guns still aimed at Doomfist. Nobody speaks. It’s a stand-off, and all Jesse knows is that he can’t let Doomfist hurt anyone else. McCree raises Peacekeeper, gritting his teeth when he feels his bullet wound throb. His head is spinning and his shirt is sticking to him with sweat, despite how cold he feels, but he has to protect them.

Doomfist and Reaper stare each other down, waiting for the other to make the first move. They all see it; Reaper looking over at Jesse, only the briefest of glances, and Doomfist smiles. “Tell me, Gabriel,” he says. Jesse goes very still when he hears that name. _No, it can’t be_ — “Has this always been where your loyalty lies?”

Reaper growls low in his chest. Doomfist’s dæmon darts over and coils around his gauntlet, flicking her tongue. The shadow of something that might once have been Reaper’s dæmon limps over back to him — Jesse looks away before he can recognise the grotesque caricature of a dæmon he’d once known.

“Talon was always on my list,” Reaper says. Doomfist nods and by some unspoken agreement Reaper lowers his shotguns. “A week and then I’m coming for you, Ogundimu. You and the rest of them.”

“Come at the king, you better not miss,” Doomfist says with a vicious grin. He walks out of the Cryo Lab and the others let him go, though Ana has to put a hand on Jack when he starts to protest. Jesse watches him go, and only when Doomfist is gone does he turn back to Moira.

She’s obviously torn between following and staying with her weapon. Jesse decides to help her along a little and fires off a warning shot at her feet. She lets out a string of invectives at him and blinks across the room — like Tracer’s jumpin’, one moment she’s in the room and the next she’s halfway out the door and turning back just to sneer at them. Moira aims a pointy finger at nothing. “You're gonna get yours, Sombra. You hear me? You're gonna get yours!”

“Oh, like I've never heard _that_ before!” Sombra calls back, dropping her cloaking as Moira makes her escape. She turns back to the members of Overwatch with a shit-eating grin. “Hey, good job not letting them keep that thing. I knew I could count on Overwatch.” Sombra twirls her fingers at the machine, still glowing purple at the back of the Cryo Lab. “Now, I don’t suppose any of you know how to deactivate it? Preferably without getting near it?”

“It’s dangerous?” Jesse asks, right as his legs go out from under him and he collapses to his knees. Hanzo’s at his side in a moment, and Karma at his other — Jesse would probably be all kinds of pleased about it if his head weren’t spinnin’ fit to roll off his shoulders. Ana crouches down in front of him with one of Jack’s biotic emitters and it clears his head enough to look at Sombra without the world tilting on its axis.

“Like this, no,” the sniper says, stepping out from where she’d been hiding. Lena squints at her but she only gazes back in a strangely detached way. “Dæmons do not continence proximity.”

“Oh hey, Amélie,” Sombra says. “You’re not going to take off with the others?”

The sniper regards her before looking at Reaper, who hasn’t moved since letting Doomfist go. She then looks at McCree, strangely. “No,” she says. “I will take my chances with Overwatch.”

“What the hell makes you think you’re coming with us?” Jack snarls at her.

Her expression doesn’t change, doesn’t so much as flicker. Amélie simply shrugs. “You do not have to take me. It would be in your best interests, however.”

“Overwatch supposed to be exclusive now, Jack?” McCree says a little meanly. “Thought we gave up on that when we let you back in.”

Reaper snorts and finally lets go of his guns. They hit the ground with a clatter before dissolving into smoke — Gabriel Reyes would never have treated his shotguns that way but Jesse couldn’t say there was much about the man he recognised anymore. There’s still part of Jesse that hopes that ain’t him as he watches Reaper stride over to the weapon.

True to Amélie’s word, his dæmon hates it. It pulls away, a thick mass less like smoke than something that had gone bad and curdled, leaving a black smear like oil or blood in his wake. Like watchin’ someone pull off their own arm, tearing through muscle and skin, without flinching. Karma whimpers half a name, “Obie—”

The daemon looks at him and blinks its many eyes in a ripple. “ _Cachorro_ ,” it rasps.

Only one man had ever called them that. McCree closes his eyes rather than watch what used to be Gabriel Reyes reach out to Talon’s weapon, his arm a mass of smoky tendrils. Hanzo’s hand settles warm on the back of his neck. “Jesse?”

“I’m here, darlin’,” he replies, reaching back to grasp Hanzo’s hand in his. “It’s been a helluva day, is all.”

“We should get back to the zeppelin, _habibi_ , before you bleed out,” Ana says gently. Hanzo and Ana hoist him up by the arms while Lena helps Hana to her feet. Genji looks at Orisa, still sparking faintly where she’s embedded in the wall, before he sinks his blade into her torso. “Genji?”

“My master taught me — I am rescuing her brain,” he says as he pulls out a tangle of wires connected to a drive he stows in the compartment in his arm. “Efi can reconstruct her but she needs the core.”

“Efi’ll be mad we let her robot get totalled,” Hana says, a hand to her temple. “Damn, and I was hoping she’d upgrade my MEKA.”

“I’m sure y’can buy yer way back into her good graces with some signed merch.” Jesse braves looking over at Gabe — at his feet, the weapon has lost its glow. It no longer hurts to look at, and Jesse’s not the only one to sigh with relief.

Gabe gives it a hard kick for good measure as he retracts his tendrils from inside it, but he doesn’t turn around. Jack’s watching Gabe with a face as stiff and hard to read as the lines of Gabe’s back. Jesse doesn’t know how much he can see without his visor, how much he knows about what was done to Gabe and what he’s become. “Do you have any loyalties? Do you remember what those are?” he asks lowly.

Reaper turns slowly and raises a single talon to point at Jack. “You’re still on my list. And her.” He points at Ana who only looks back grimly. “Mark my words, Jack. I will settle my business with you.”

His mask tilts just a little in his direction and Jesse knows Gabe’s lookin’ his way. Something sticks to the inside of his ribs, hot and vulnerable. Jesse opens his mouth and what comes out is small and so young. “ _Jefe?_ ”

Gabe collapses into smoke and swirls around around the Cryo Lab like a black dust devil, picking up his dæmon and rushing for the door. Jesse reaches out for him but Gabe passes through his fingers without so much as a pause. He’s gone, and Jesse’s looking after him with his face twisted up and his ribs aching with that feeling.

Karma whimpers and Mizazi bumps her head gently against his chin. Hanzo laces their fingers together and squeezes, giving Jesse something to ground him, to keep him in that moment with him. Jesse turns to smile at Hanzo — which is when he realises the cryo tube has been open the whole time and a short Cathayan women is squinting at them.

“Is he gone?” she whispers loudly. “The smoke monster, is he— are you all here to rescue me?” She squints harder. “Who even are you? Sorry, I can’t see without my glasses.”

Her newt dæmon crawls out of her pajama top and scrutinises the lot of them — or else he’s just as short sighted as she is. “Are you with Overwatch?” he asks dubiously.

McCree looks at Hanzo, who shrugs and looks a little lost. Lena grimaces, Hana looks a little concussed, and Genji’s staying out of the whole situation with what remains of Orisa. Ana shares a significant look with Jack — Jesse recognises that look and its power is all in the eyebrows — and whatever she’s conveying makes Jack give a deep, long-suffering sigh.

“You!” he barks, pointing at Amélie. “You want to join Overwatch?”

“Ouais.”

“You?” Jack asks, turning his finger on Sombra.

She shrugs. “Don’t have any better offers.”

“And you?” he asks the Cathayan woman finally, swinging his arm around to level his finger at her.

“Um—” She looks like she’s been caught in the headlights, freezing with her eyes gone huge. Her dæmon scuttles back inside her pajamas and she glances at Jesse, for some reason. He tries the same trick as Ana, lifting his eyebrows and nodding rapidly. She seems to get it as she squeaks her answer. “Yes! I thought I already was? But I’ll join again!”

“Great,” Jack says gruffly. “Welcome to Overwatch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and if you're still here at the end of my self-indulgent dæmon au, u have my eternal gratitude.
> 
> i want to again thank my partner Nangke for their amazing art, my betas Sadako and Chillie for helping keep this au straight and reminding me to explain what the hell is going on, respectively, and everyone in the bb discord.
> 
> EDIT: Ellie has also done some art, and you can find it [here](http://itssinenoon.tumblr.com/post/172660760957/some-fanart-for-cast-no-shadow-by-personalspin)!! LOOK AT IT I'M LOVE


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